Those who are About to Die Salute You
by laxmad
Summary: An ancient spell, a protection, a will to push harder than any. Watch as Harry Born 1 year later takes Hogwarts and the world by storm, don't be surprised if it gets very very interesting, not all things are as they appear – Majorly AU - Hufflepuff/Independent/Super!Harry - Harry/Multi - some strong violence, drug use and language - Chapter 12 up
1. Prolouge

A/N – After a lot of critical reviews of this chapter I have gone back through and filled in some much needed comma's and line breaks, If you have already muddled your way through it before there is no extra information. Hopefully this makes it a bit easier to read, I will be doing the same with a couple of the other chapters as well. Thanks for reading.

A cruel wind whipped along picking up the sand and blowing it across the vast arena and down the hatch to one side, the fine particles attacking the metal plate armor of the men standing in the stone pit creating a faint rat a tat tat barely audible above the cheers and moans of the crowd.

The team of six scarred and battle worn bodies stand stoically looking as though they don't have a care in the world, that the battle they're about to encounter is not the first and won't be the last, not by a long shot.

The scars upon their faces the dints in their chest plates and the nicks and bloodstains on their blades bespoke of many a battle won. You would be forgiven therefore for believing that the battle they were about to enter was one that was already won.

For only one who knew them well could tell the fear that plagued these men's minds the icy prickling up their spine the grasping hand on their heart shoving it upwards as though trying to eject it through their mouths, you would be forgiven, for the only people who know these men well were themselves.

Six years ago this troupe had formed purchased one by one from all over Rome by one of the richest lords of the land, the best of the best he had wanted, a year and a half they had trained before they had been submitted to battle in order to be in perfect unison with each other and in the four and a half years following never had they been defeated, the very thought of them stuck fear in the hearts of their opponents.

But that was then and this… this was now. Over the last 6 months rumors of a new troupe had been spreading a band of mighty warriors small on brain but big on brawn. Despite having great strength they apparently did not apparently have good fighting skills nor were they unified however it was heard tell that fatal hits were laid time and time again upon these men and they would continue to rise up until their opponents were exhausted and they would then strike the killing blow.

Now finally these two great teams these two groups of mighty gladiators would be pitted against each other in a fight to the death. From up in the arena a mighty horn sounded, the men took one final look at each other and walked up the gangway with a sense of foreboding.

Coming to the pavilion where the emperor sat they chanced a glance over at the other group of six men who looked back and smirked before turning to the emperor and saying "morituri te salutant." It might have been their imagination but they could almost believe that there was a faint glow about them barely visible in the glaring sun, but then it was gone. The men slightly confused yet more fearful than before turned back to the emperor and raised their weapons in respect before turning to face quite possibly the last fight of their lives…

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The next day 6 men found themselves working in separate fields scattered across Rome there was a brief moment of confusion as they wondered why they were there, and images of blood and gore flashed before their eyes. But as quickly as it came it was gone and they went back to their scythes cutting the grass as they had done since they were born.

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A man with a power that none bar one had ever seen before strode confidently to the door of a small house in the quaint little village of Godric's Hollow. With a brief gesture of his hand the door was in a million pieces scattered all over the floor and he continued into the house without breaking stride.

"Lily it's him, take Harry and run, I'll hold him off," a dark haired man was yelling over his shoulder, he was dead before he turned round, magical and spiritual energy swept from him with a gust of sickly green light.

Tom Riddle, better known as Lord Voldermort, for that is of course who this man was, paused briefly looking at the dead man at his feet. Such a shame to have had to kill him, pure blood was in such rare supply as it was, "ah well soon it will all be over," he murmured.

He turned his attention to the sound of the desperate footsteps upstairs. There was no rush, as with the anti apparition wards up, the impertuable charms on the windows and the only fireplace in the house situated downstairs, there would be no escape.

He had spent over a week researching and preparing for this battle, once he had the location from that sniveling little rat, you didn't become the most feared dark lord in history from being careless. So he strode calmly upstairs, the frightened magical energies of the filthy mudblood and the unusually strong toddler guiding him better than massive flashing arrows to his prey.

Stepping into what he guessed was the nursery he caught the last words of a spell "…uri te salutant," ever on guard, especially at the sound of an unfamiliar spell, from a hostile he whipped his wand down, whilst sidestepping the non-existent attack, and with a feverish "Avada Kedavra," sent the redhead slumping to the ground.

After the threat was eliminated he took stock of what he actually saw the mudblood actually had her wand aimed at the crying toddler's forehead where an angry red burn in the shape of a lightning bolt was obviously causing considerable distress to the child. Sensing no major threat from the spell and knowing nothing could stop the unforgivable curse he once more, calmly this time, raised his wand and spoke the words of the killing curse.

Then pain.


	2. Chapter 1  The Whos and the Whats

Thanks for the reviews!

Pinelles62 – don't worry it's a prologue, the story will be spending no more time in ancient Rome, it was important but you won't figure out why for a while (or maybe you will who knows), and yes the main story will be much less cryptic. In general I dislike "research" for characters/readers finding out information, there will be a bit of it, however in general it will be through interactive experiences (hopefully you find them more interesting than the prologue).

The dragon bard – my apologies again it was just the prologue I assure you other chapters will be over 1000 words.

Also just so you readers know this isn't a plotwhatplot story, I have all 7 years planned out and a complete chapter guide planned for the 1st year so far. I apologize if you find this first chapter moves a bit slowly but the pace will pick up, there's a lot of character background to set up. I like to believe that I've made it as interesting as possible . Hope you enjoy.

Also please note as with the prologue I have fixed up some of the spelling and grammar in this chapter, again there is no new information however it should read a lot easier than before. Thanks for reading

Chapter 1

Harry Potter was running as fast as he possibly could and had been for the past five minutes, he was bruised and battered and in the past three days he had had naught more than 2 slices of dry toast and 2 cups of water; his muscles were on fire as his famished body did what it could to keep the thickened dehydrated blood pumping to them, his breath came in sharp bursts that felt like swallowing needles.

But he wasn't worried, not yet, after all he knew it was just pain and pain he could push through, he had before and he would again. Pain had never been an issue for him he had always been able to continue going as hard as he could right up until the very moment when his body would completely give out and he would faint, he wasn't worried because he knew from experience that he had at least two more minutes of flat out sprinting left before that happened.

But who is Harry Potter and why is he running? To put it simply Harry Potter is an orphan who has grown up with his aunt, uncle and cousin in the boxy little neighborhood of Little Whining, Surrey, in their boxy little home; number 4 Privet Drive.

Now whilst his relatives were boxy, his uncle and cousin quite literally, being almost as wide as they were tall, Harry was anything but. Harry was so far outside the box it was ridiculous Harry was out outside the suburb, that the street, with the house, with the attic, with the box was in.

He was a very unusual boy, very skinny for his age with strait jet black hair that fell just short of his eyes, which were a brilliant almost iridescent green, and covered up a angry red scar in the shape of a lightning bolt on his forehead. A constant reminder of the car crash when his parents died, or so he was told by his aunt and uncle.

Not that Harry particularly believed this. He had grown up with the notion that; if his relatives told him something, which was rarely, it was universally false. For if he closes his eyes very tight he could feel a stick pressed to his forehead, mumbled words then a burning pain, a flashing green light and a figure with beautiful red hair slumping to the floor. He assumed the figure was his mother and whilst he couldn't tell the how or why, he knew what a car crash was and that was not it.

The other reason he didn't believe the story was that Harry Potter was very good at reading people, for him it was a necessity with his relatives around. He never knew what they might try and pull. So he learnt to read faces, body movements, that slight bead of sweat on his uncles brow that indicated stress or excitement, the way his aunts eyes would move the her top left if she was remembering something as opposed to the top right if she was trying to make something up,

Harry was seven years old and had been reading people like this for three years ever since his cousin got him into trouble twice in a row by saying he was allowed to help himself to the biscuit jar, and he had been beaten terribly by his uncle for it. He had decided being lied to so easily was a liability.

But the crazy thing was about this ability was that it was getting better, partially due to Harry's practice and vigilance about everything he did, constantly looking for new ways to monitor people and what their tiniest actions mean about what their saying. But also because, now occasionally when he would look in someone's eye he would see traces of memories that didn't belong to him, generally relevant to what the person was talking about, however sometimes the relevance didn't become apparent until later. Harry didn't know whether he was imagining it or not but so far these snippets of memory hadn't led him astray.

As for why Harry Potter was running, now that's a slightly easier story to tell; he was running from his cousin and his little gang of thugs who, all on pushbikes would chase him down whenever they got the opportunity and all seven of them would beat him up together. "Harry Hunting" they would call it and whilst it may have been there's it wasn't Harry's favorite pastime.

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Unpredictability is the key Harry thought to himself as he drew yet another gasping painful breath and he took a left into a garden on the street, ducked through the hole that he know was in the fence between the two houses and erupted through the other garden on the next street. Before colliding with Piers Polkiss on a bike.

"Bugger" thought Harry, "maybe not."

Piers was knocked off the bike and to the ground and took a moment to shake himself by which time Harry, despite probably taking a harder fall was already 50 meters away running for his life. "I've got him" shouted Piers into a walkie talkie, a present to Dudley from his Mother and Father for just "being so wonderful." "He's running down Staple street," then in reply to the muffled response from Dudley on the other end "come on big D, the street next to where you live!" Satisfied that his idiotic leader knew the destination Piers jumped back on his bike and hurtled off after Harry.

Harry hearing Piers conversation and knowing that he had only about a minute of running left in him, especially after that fall which had left a huge red graze all down his left side, knew that he had to get away now!

Pushing with all his might to get away from Piers, he saw, up ahead of him four push bikes coming his way, he veered to the left hoping to go under a fence and get over to the next street again when he felt his legs stop moving, having given all they could, since his torso still had momentum he fell forward and since his tired arms didn't have the strength to catch him, he fell flat on his face.

Blood dripping everywhere he desperately tried to regain his feet now to the sound of the raucous laughter of the five boys who knew they had caught their prey. Harry knowing it was useless talking, turned over to see them and better be able to defend himself. Just as he rolled he felt a foot impact his left side, right on the huge rash he got from his earlier encounter with Piers and he felt something crack.

Vision blurring he valiantly put his hands in front of his face but to no avail. Feeling punches and kicks to all parts of his body with about one in 3 resulting in a crunch that really shouldn't happen he resigned himself that he probably lost this round then the toe of a boot impacted with his temple and he felt no more.

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Harry awoke to the sound of rustling from the bush that he'd been shoved into, a lot of pain all over his body, almost total darkness and a slight weight on his chest, which had nothing to do with his injuries. Looking down he noticed a garden snake, fast asleep nestled up in his oversized shirt obviously making the most of the heat his body was producing.

"Come on little friend, off you get" Harry told the snake who, arousing from its slumber and looking up at him replied quite pathetically, "warm." After many hours spent outside weeding his relatives' garden Harry had quite a rapport with snakes and found their childish petulance amusing, however this wasn't the best time, "now" he said firmly, and with one more puppy dog eyed look the snake slithered off to find a less grumpy bed.

Dragging himself to a sitting position Harry assessed his injuries by methodically moving each part of his body, and probing what he couldn't, such as his torso. He found he had 3 broken ribs, two broken toes where someone had obviously stood on him and a dislocated shoulder, probably from being dragged into the bush. Figuring he could at least deal with the latter right now he gingerly lowered himself back to the ground this time on his stomach then quickly, gritting his teeth against the pain reared up like a hooked fish and slammed his shoulder into the concrete pavement. The satisfying pop more than made up for the pain of the maneuver and he now feeling a little more mobile got to his feet, avoiding putting too much weight on the broken one and began the trek "home."

Arriving at number four Privet Drive he found the door locked, so he skirted round to the shed and grabbed a flat blade screw driver and a small nail and returned to the front. With a couple of deft movements of the hand he had the lock picked within fifteen seconds, he let himself in, carefully shut and relocked the door.

Taking a glance at the clock in the hallway he noted it was 3:15 am, which would give him 2 hours and 15 minutes until he had to be up doing chores so he, very quietly, made his way to the stairs then instead of going up them tiptoed to the cupboard underneath and crawled in, shutting the door and quietly climbing onto the moth eaten mattress. He noted to himself once again what time he had to be awake by in the morning and almost instantly entered the realm of the sandman.

Exactly two and a quarter hours later at 5:30 Harry's precise biological clock, honed over years of beatings if he was up late, snapped him strait from asleep to fully awake. Finding he was still dressed from the night before he got up and went outside to put a good two hours of work into the immaculately kept garden beds before the neighborhood was properly awake and could see what the Dursleys made him do.

On his feet he noticed the pain in his foot was gone as was the pain in his ribs. Not that he was surprised, mending broken bones was something his body did naturally while he slept, he knew it wasn't normal, having had plenty of injuries, he had done extensive research into how to treat them and knew it should have taken more than a night's sleep to mend a broken bone. But he wasn't about to complain.

Three hours later, having meticulously weeded the garden, pruned all the roses, polished the cheap statue in the front yard and given his uncles car a once over with the soft cloth, found him inside cooking up a mess of bacon and eggs.

His uncle arrived in the kitchen looked at him grunted, sat down and picked up the paper that Harry had put down for him. Working quickly Harry poured a bit of milk in the already steeping tea, stirred in four sugars and put it down in front of Vernon as quietly as he could.

Turning around he grabbed the toast that had just popped, buttered it, then piled it, the eggs and bacon onto three plates and set them down at the table just as Dudley came into the room, bleary eyed led by his aunt.

They sat down and started to eat and normal conversation developed about their plans for the Saturday which included a trip to the park, a movie and lunch at a fancy restaurant as though they really were a happy family of three.

Harry standing in the corner chewing on his single piece of dry toast was also going through his plans for the day which included waiting until the Dursleys' breakfast was over tidying up the kitchen, vacuuming and dusting the whole house, polishing all the furniture, doing all the washing and mowing the lawns (his official chore which he was meant to do in the middle of the day wearing his best clothes. This was intended to show off to the neighbors that the Dursleys were responsible caregivers who instilled good work ethics to their young charges, Dudley's chore was putting the bins out on garbage day, which he did bitterly and with much complaining, not to mention that Harry had to bring them in.)

All this he was planning on doing as soon as possible. As once he was done he was allowed free time as long as he wasn't at "home."

In the end the remaining chores took about four hours which left him free from just after lunch time, which in these longer summer months gave him nearly 8 hours to do what he wanted, going to the library for a read was top of his priorities list.

Harry was a very intelligent boy and learning new things was one of the only things that gave him real pleasure, a result, probably of good genetics and being forced to grow up way too soon. As such he loved spending much of his spare time in the local library, scouring the numerous books for information on topics which garnered his interest, the rest of his precious spare time he spent in the field, so to speak, proving for himself that what he had read was true. Whether it was counting the spurs on a pinecone to check if the number "phi" really did apply in nature, or hiding out in the shed in the backyard using his uncles tools to try and bring some life back into some old damaged electrical appliances. He had almost the perfect mix, a love of pure knowledge and a love of practical application.

Today it was flora and fauna, he was intending on discovering what some of the beautiful flowers were in his local park, he figured he could get a nice feel for what might be there then go along and find out for himself what actually was. So after an uneventful walk to the library and a question in hushed tones to the elderly librarian who absolutely adored the quiet studious boy. Harry spent so much time in the library and yet hardly let a book of fiction pass beneath his nose (and those that were, were classics; Dickens, Papillion etc.) found Harry surrounded by giant tombs on native plants and animals quietly scratching on the backside of some salvaged letters from the paper bin, with the nub of a pencil he had pinched from his school.

After what he deemed sufficient note taking and research, which included thorough reading of appropriate sections on several tombs references to a Latin dictionary to find out what some of the more interesting names of the plants were, and nearly 10 pages of detailed notes in a small, slightly childish yet neat script complete with copied diagrams. Harry left the library, putting the books away and quietly thanking the librarian on his way out.

From there he went to the local park and set about finding some of the flowers that he had made notes about. After about an hour he had worked through about four pages of his own notes and made many more notations and pictures based on his real life experience with the material. When he found his face a lot closer than he intended to the rose bush he was studying, with the interesting assortment of bugs on its stem, being lucky to shut his eyes on time to avoid being blinded by the thorns he rolled to the side got up and started running, brushing the aphids off his face and wincing as his hands pressed roughly on his scratches as he went.

Taking a look behind him he saw as he expected Dudley and Piers chasing him, luckily this time sans the pushbikes. Spinning back around with the intent to find a good direction to escape to Harry suddenly saw a blur of something flesh colored and then his whole world did a one eighty.

Looking up from his awkward position on his back he saw Michael Carmen another member of Dudley's gang climbing up from his knees obviously just having taken Harry's legs out. Harry feeling pain from his right hand noticed his middle finger bent at an odd angle. From previous reading in the library (Harry had done extensive research into common injuries, a necessity in his position) he recognized a dislocation and quickly yanked it back into place not even noticing the pain. Looking around for a way to run he saw none. He was surrounded by Dudley's gang.

Never having actually been in this situation before, surrounded with no way out, yet still with plenty of energy, harry hesitated for the briefest instant about what to do before jumping to his feet fists raised. Knowing he was severely outnumbered and that his attackers were not likely to take him from the front fairly, he took the fight to them.

He went first not for the most dangerous who was obviously Piers, fit and smart, but the leader Dudley knowing that without him the boys wouldn't have as much provocation to go after him. Never having been in a fight before, at least one where he could fight back, he didn't quite know what to do however having, once again, done reading he knew enough that small fast strait punches were the way to go.

Dudley and his gang not expecting an attack didn't move and Harry hit him with all he had right below the sternum in his tubby solar plexus, keeping his arm and wrist strait and hitting with his top two knuckles, just like the books said. Dudley went down instantly, completely winded trying to draw breath but totally failing.

Had he been more experienced in group fighting, Harry may have taken the fight to the others, picked out the stronger one first and disposed of them in order, or he may have used the gap in the circle to run like the wind outpacing them as he knew he could, however the adrenaline had got to him as had the surprise.

For the first time he had hurt the boy who had been his tormenter for as long as he could remember and it was like blood to a hungry shark, Harry jumped on Dudley and started hitting him everywhere he could reach, his reading paying off as he hit him where he knew it would do damage or hurt and his punches, technically accurate if not well practiced would have been painful.

After being so badly winded Dudley was in no position to fight back to begin with and after a well placed knuckle to each temple he was completely out for the count then Harry laid blow after blow into his head and ribs whilst working Dudley's upper legs and crotch over with knees that a professional cage fighter may not be proud of, but would be quite impressed with from an untrained kid his age.

Being so unexpected it took the other boys a good 10 seconds to wizen up before jumping into action. One dragging Harry up in a headlock whilst another of them, Harry couldn't tell which hit him in the side with a tough roundhouse punch and that was it for his finesse, he started wildly kicking punching for all he was worth and let loose with a stomp which hit something soft then hard and the hard thing crunched in way he was sure it wasn't supposed to.

He was thrown to the ground and getting hit all over by at least six fists and he, despite being in so much pain, was fighting back for all he was worth, thinking all the while, somewhat strangely, "this is more fun than running."

Then it stopped, a frantic yell "shit, big D's coughing up blood!" Looking up bleary eyed he saw four blurry figures trying to pull a fifth to its feet. Then the wooziness came and he rolled over, the blows to his head doing what they should have done a couple of minutes ago and rendering him unconscious.

Awaking on the ground outside for the second time in less than 24 hours Harry caught his bearings and remembered what had happened. Judging by the sun in the sky he had only been out for less than an hour and knowing how much he had hurt Dudley knew that there would be hell to pay, despite the fact he clearly started it. Clawing his way to his feet he began the long painful trip home.

Arriving at number four he found the door locked and the car gone, which was unusual for this time on a Sunday so he picked the lock and crashed on his little mattress in the cupboard completely exhausted.

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"You little fuck!" Harry awoke to his door literally being swung off its hinges and banging halfway down the corridor. "How dare you hurt my son" his bull hippopotamus of an uncle was screaming at him. Harry found himself dragged from the cupboard by an iron vice grip on his ankle, his frantic scrabbling at the mattress to try and keep himself in his room did nothing and he was dumped unceremoniously on the floor and a foot placed on his chest.

"The doctors said it's a miracle he didn't DIE, you punctured his lung with his rib!" Harry whose eyes were literally popping from the pressure on his chest couldn't reply even if he'd wanted to. He was picked up and thrown bodily down the corridor.

"You stupid mangy FUCK," Vernon shouted again, punctuating each word with a kick, his veins were popping out with the exertion, his face had turned the colour of a royal mail postage box and there was a manic look in his eye.

"I'll teach you to touch my son!" Harry felt his leg being picked up by two meaty hands one on his knee the other on his ankle, he opened his eyes to see what was happening and he saw his uncle sharply bring his shin down on his own knee like one would break up kindling for a fire. His leg shattered and he watched horrified as his tibia and fibula erupted from four places through his calf muscle.

Then he was thrown to the floor. Gasping with unimaginable pain, Harry looked to the right and saw an almighty kick coming right to his face then he felt no more…


	3. Chapter 2 The Hows and the Whens

Thanks for the Reviews

Ceo55- thanks for being my first multiple reviewer! You'll just have to read on won't you! The pace will pick up a bit this chapter however no real plot development until chapters 3 and 4 so I ask you to bear with me on that.

The DragonBard- thanks for the grammar/spelling points, it's been a while since I've written much, I sure that my writing skills will improve with later chapters, I do appreciate the feedback and I do ask you to bear with me. As mentioned before you'll just have to read on

LeprechaunJV – please see above :P

SimFlyer- I hope it's not too disturbing for you, it does have a point, sort of, which will become apparent later.

Karou WindStalker- I'm going to do my best!

Chapter2

It had been over a year since that fateful night when Harry had been beaten within an inch of death by his uncle. He had awoken in a strange position on the floor obviously after having been thrown inside his cupboard. Using his bed as a brace he had wrenched his bones back into their right places as best he could and then passed out again from the pain of doing so.

When he awoke in the morning he was tired beyond belief yet there wasn't a scratch on him aside from of course his ever present scar. From then on Harry had decided that he needed to be cleverer. He had shown himself that he could fight back if he needed to but he had also discovered that it was not always the best option.

As it turned out Dudley had taken over six weeks to heal from the injuries that Harry gave him, during which time Harry was worked like a slave as punishment, however even when he was back to full health Dudley always seemed a little bit jumpy around his skinny cousin and aside from a couple of instances with Piers, which didn't last long without his leaders enthusiasm, Harry hadn't been on the receiving end of a proper game of "Harry Hunting" since.

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Today was a school day the first school day of Harry and Dudley's final year of primary school as it happens. Despite Harry still being downtrodden at home and his ever increasing workload, as he got older his aunt and uncle made him do more and more to "pull his weight." Without the constant attempts of bashing, Harry was for once feeling like every other kid in his year, that he was on top of the world. They (aside from the teachers) were the eldest in the school and they had decided they should enjoy the feeling before the tables were turned next year at high school.

So it was, that a class of ten year olds walked into a classroom in Little Whining, Surrey with their shoulders thrown arrogantly back speaking loudly as though what they had so say was of great importance, which, of course, it was. One student however walked in a little bit more normally and silently and due to his lack of trying to hard, looked even more arrogant than the rest. He shot a glance and a small smirk at his chubby cousin, who, despite appearance had actually lost a bit of weight since "the incident." Dudley, for that's who it was, looked scared, not that anyone else could tell, all they would see would be a confident boy with his friends smugly smiling at the lone skinny child. However Harry with his years of experience reading people saw the way his eyes skidded around their sockets looking for a route of escape and how they rested on the teacher before the smile came to his face, he noticed the slight change in pace of his voice as he momentarily lost his train of thought and most importantly he caught the sudden memory of extreme pain and fear coupled with his own, year younger face as he caught his cousins eye. Satisfied, Harry sat.

Class progressed in the same monotonous fashion that it had every year previously, the subject material was if anything easier (probably due to the summer break) than it had been at the end of the last year. Harry who had been expecting more, chastised himself for doing so and promised himself as soon as he got home and his work was done he would head to the library and get some information on some truly interesting topics

His current passion was anything to do with money or wealth. Being 10 years old and the most money he had ever had in his hand being a measly 10 pounds, when his aunt had started getting him to run errands down the local shops and even then he had to bring back the receipt and correct change to the penny, so he was quite fascinated by the concept of having lots of cash.

Despite his disregard for the current topic he breezed through the class work having no real difficulty with the topic, which was percentages. His lack of interest must have been apparent as he had been finished for about 5 minutes and was staring glassy eyed into space, as he often did when he was puzzling through something, when his teacher snapped,

"Harry,"

"Mm, yes miss" he said coming out of his reverie

"If I have 10 pounds and I spend 7.62 of it what's the percentage I have left?" after about 2 seconds Harry replied

"23.8% miss." The teacher got a confused look in her eye, Harry caught it and sent out the little wave that he now knew he needed to get access to memories. He got a feeling of confusion about the fact that he could pick it up that easily and that she thought he hadn't been paying attention. He hadn't been but it was a pretty easy problem and he decided to drop the topic.

The rest of the day passed in the same manner, he sat alone at lunch occasionally approached by people who were after a casual chat however he was in a thinking mood and there was little they could do to draw more than one or two responses out of him.

After school was over, he walked home with Dudley, a year ago he would have been walking by himself while Dudley got a ride from his mother or father however after "the incident" the doctors had suggested that Dudley get more exercise, so his parents had gotten him to walk home, after a very harsh preemptive speech to Harry about what would happen if he did anything. With Dudley's newfound fear of Harry and Harry's honest lack of trying to get into trouble the entire six block journey passed without a word between them. Upon arriving home Dudley was greeted warmly by his mother who tried to coax hugs, kisses and information about his day out of him, whilst he, ignoring her, tramped up to his bedroom to play the latest installment of crash bandicoot on his computer.

Harry was greeted by a grunt from Vernon and a nod in the direction of his study. Ever since Harry had begun excelling in his studies Vernon had decided that instead of punishing him it would be a better idea to utilize his abilities as slave labor, so he had promptly fired half his account keeping staff and "employed" harry to pick up the slack so every day after school, in addition to his other chores, harry would sit in the study and balance Grunning's, the drill company which Vernon worked for, cheque book it wasn't overly difficult work, for someone with decent mathematics skills heck harry was even allowed to use a calculator, however it required quite a lot of attention to detail and took him nearly 2 hours a night. On this particular night however he was done in a little over an hour, he left everything neat and ready for Vernon in his study, rushed to the kitchen threw together a quick meal, threw a load of laundry on and headed out for the library.

Upon reaching there and sitting down in his favorite corner he pulled out some of the books that he had picked off the shelf and started reading.

He had come up with a theory, which would explain his apparent empty headedness at school thinking about it, which was that his ability to see people's memories had only really come to the fore when he had started to really develop his ability to read peoples body language and interpret visually whether or not they were lying. As he got better and better he got the flashes of memories more and more and once they became frequent he noticed a pattern; that they would come most often when he really wanted extra information out of the person and that each time they came there would be a little surge of power which seemed to come from just above his gut and out his eyes. It was subtle which was why he hardly noticed it when it first began to happen however now, that he was looking for it, he could actually see what the strand of "energy" was doing. It was white in colour and would reach out into the other person's eye and bring something slightly silvery back with it, which Harry assumed was the memory.

Now that he had refined the ability he found had the power to call it up at will however with his advancements in reading people conventionally he only found it necessary very occasionally.

Harry's theory was that it would be very unusual, not that it wasn't unusual anyway, for him to have this power which could only do this one thing, so enclosed in his little corner, the only place he felt truly alone, he had decided to do try and something else with it. Knowing how to call it up with his mind reading ability, as he had taken to calling it, in various quantities which varied the amount and depth of memories he would receive meant that he knew where this power was located.

So he sat down shut his eyes and tried to feel it. He got the sensation of it quickly and tried to get it to move; having plenty of conditioning it leapt for his eyes and then bounced back, since they were shut, with an odd ringing sensation.

Harry opened his eyes and shook his head before trying, this time slowly, to bring the power up again, as it once again leapt from his centre strait upwards he stemmed it's flow at his neck and tried to direct it down his arm, as it moved down it hurt a bit, like pins and needles, but it continued to creep down his arm to his hands. When it was there Harry was lost for a couple of minutes as he tried to figure out what to do next while he was thinking he noticed that whilst there was a large amount of energy in his hands there was a thin strand connecting each mass to his centre, he wondered a bit about this however paid it little mind as he thought about how to get the power out.

Then he remembered, skin has tiny little holes called pores that allow sweat to escape. He had no sooner thought this than the energy began pooling in his palms, it felt cool like water yet warm at the same time, like sitting in a car in the sun with the air-conditioning on, it was white and emitted a faint ethereal light.

Fascinated Harry tried to direct it to touch the table, which it did happily. Not knowing anything else that this strange substance could do Harry attempted to read the table's "mind" and nothing happened. So he pushed more and more of the energy into it before he finally got a memory, there was no vision or audio or smell or any other sense he was familiar with just a "feeling" of calmness, of growth and of sun on his leaves. The sensation was quite odd as he didn't possess the correct senses to interpret these feelings properly. Thinking that reading the minds of inanimate objects wasn't the best idea, he decided to save it for emergencies and started to think of other things he could perhaps get this stuff to do.

Looking at the table Harry saw a scratch on it and thought that maybe he could do that, so using the substance already on the table, which he noticed was connected to his hand with the same gossamer like string that connected it through his arms and chest to his centre, he made it turn into a spike and drew it across the table. Sure enough there was a scratch there. Excited harry released his hold on the power and it quickly snapped back to his centre like a tape measure rewinding giving him an wonderful sense of power as it did.

Realizing that making scratches was probably even more useless than reading the mind of a table, taking into account his hypothesis about this "stuff," whatever it was, consisted of knowing as much as you could about something to use the power to control it or perhaps modify it and considering his newfound love of all things monetary. Harry cast a greed look at the piece of chalk next to him which he had pinched from school and pulled towards him a book titled: Alchemy in the dark ages.

Several hours after finding that alchemy had never succeeded and "Alchemy in the dark ages" was a book on mad professors of ancient history. Harry had instead done extensive readings on the properties of chalk or calcium carbonate as he had found it to be called, which had lead him to read about what calcium and carbonate were which had led him directly to what gold was which he had been planning to research later.

He had discovered that as calcium carbonate and gold seemed to be made up of the same stuff, atoms, just of different sizes, so he decided to simply break all the atoms in the chalk apart into what the book called protons, electrons and neutrons then join them back together as gold atoms. He couldn't find anything about how to break atoms apart or put them back together, there had been a small passage on nuclear fusion power plants however he'd skipped over it as he wasn't trying to make electricity, so he figured he could just wing it.

Taking the chalk and placing it on the table he once again called the power up and ran it under the stick then he lifted it up (which he just realized was a pretty useful, easy task which he hadn't thought of before). Then he created a bubble around it out of the substance just in case something happened and using the power tore the chalk apart into its constituent pieces.

The transparent bubble suddenly became very hot and he couldn't see in it anymore, well he could but it just looked white, assuming this was fine he had a glance at the table at his notes saw how many of each subatomic particle that gold was meant to have and got the power to shove the particles together in that form. The heat evaporated from the bubble instantly and he saw a golden haze inside instead of the almost blinding white, realizing that he needed to create a shape for the gold he shoved it all together as a ball and let the magic surrounding it drop. The ball dropped the four inches to the table but even before he hit, which it did, with a dull thump and no bounce, Harry knew something was wrong. It was a feeling he was getting from the ball, it was strange, like the ball shouldn't exist.

He reached out to grab it with the intent to examine it but as soon as his fingers made contact with the surface he got a massive jolt of the feeling through his hand and he almost gagged.

Recovering he picked up the ball, which still felt wrong but didn't make him that queasy as before and he examined it, it was exactly like the book said it should be. It had a lovely golden luster, it was extremely heavy for its size it felt soft and cold to touch however it didn't feel like gold. Not that he had ever held gold before however he knew this wasn't it or it was but it wasn't quite right.

Deciding that gold had been a huge first step it and it probably wasn't feasible that he would get it on the first go Harry thinking that backtracking a bit would be a good idea, returned to his books. Having a look through the periodic table, a wonderful thing in his opinion, he figured that it would be best for his long term goals to stick to metal and set about searching for one he knew, he was surprised that since this table was supposed to contain every element known to man it didn't contain metals which he was certain exited such as steel, figuring this was something he would come to understand later he picked one that he did know and set about reading up on its properties.

Having actually held iron before and seen it in the flesh, so to speak, he figured he would have a much easier time duplicating it.

After a good half hour of studying before satisfying himself that he had enough information, Harry once again attempted to create something. No longer having the chalk he decided to use the "gold" to make iron. Judging by his research the amount of gold whilst small, due to the size of the atoms would give him a much larger quantity of iron, nearly double, and noting how easy it had been to shape, this time he decided to make something useable, something that he had a lot of experience handling, using and washing which he figured he could duplicate, a butter knife.

Drawing up the energy again he realized that the bubble only needed to be as big as the object rather than the six inch sphere which he had been using before.

When he split up the "gold" he still felt the same intense warmth and still saw the same blinding white light as before but expecting it this time wasn't surprised. Shaping the iron was surprisingly simple he simply had to think about the knife but in detail, the bluntish serrated edge the little "D" monogram on the end (the Dursleys really were up themselves,) the way that food would get stuck in the little ridge between the handle and the blade. When Harry let the little sphere turned knife shaped energy "orb" drop out fell a perfectly shaped butter knife. Ecstatic harry held it up to the air in triumph.

Checking the time he noticed that it was getting quite late and knowing he would have to be home before long he wandered over to reshelf the books. Although the day had been a success it wasn't exactly what he had hoped for, he had wanted gold so he could get enough money to move away,

"but" he pondered as he moved the stool to put the higher shelved books up "Rome wasn't built in a day and" he thought as he looked up at the section he he'd found himself in, "maybe I shouldn't put all my eggs in one basket."

With images of the book still in his mind he left the library, "Learn French for Beginners, I'm sure France would be wonderful this time of year" and with an epic grin Harry wandered back.

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Several weeks had passed since Harry's breakthrough with his energy and ever since he had made many more attempts with every substance he could think of. First researching then transforming it out of whatever he could find, most had been successful except he still hadn't been able to make gold properly, putting it down as a bad job he had concentrated more on the shaping of the materials.

Recently he had learnt that air was made of the same smaller subatomic particles as the things he was trying to make which made it much easier as he didn't have to look for a source, he did however have to be careful where he took the air from as it took quite a lot to make something solid like metal and the first time he had done it he had left himself gasping for breath for a couple of seconds as he had created a vacuum around himself.

Once during his experimenting Harry had been interrupted during the changing procedure and the bonds that held the energy to his body became dislocated due to his lack of attention. He had found himself extremely tired for the next day or so and certainly couldn't use his energy for anything. So ever since he had endeavored to make his use of energy sparing realizing first that loss of it was not a good thing and took a while to replenish and secondly; he found it was so strong it was unnecessary to use anywhere near as much as he had been using. A bubble a thousandth of an inch thick did the same thing as one a quarter inch would do.

During this experimentation process Harry had discovered that the energy itself was actually very strong and would conform as he intended.

As he had only ever experienced it in its natural form of white luminescence he had never tried to change it however once he did he found he could make it look like anything he wanted, timber, metal, ceramic and it would feel like it as well if he told it to.

He also discovered that it could become strong, hard, flexible, whatever he wanted and thus discovered that if he needed an interim tool for a small period of time rather than create one out of natural materials using the energy he could just use the energy itself similar to the very first thing he had tried to do where he had scratched the table.

Once he rediscovered this he used it incessantly. Where it was perfect for him was in the kitchen and the garden, the Dursleys never gave him sharp knives, Harry supposed that they figured that he would get ideas, so he would create ultra sharp knives as he needed them.

Not that anyone ever commented but his cooking ability grew exponentially and he often noted approving looks from his aunt. He also found the ability useful in the garden where weeds which would often prove stubborn to remove using common hand tools would become easy once he created a specific tool for each weed. Due to his readings on flora he know the root structure of most of them and was able to create the tools accordingly.

Sitting in the garden one summer afternoon after school harry was once again enjoying the ability to conjure what he required literally out of thin air. He was making a energy based tool for the extraction of a dandelion when he thought,

"why am I still doing the work, why don't I get the energy to pull out it as well?" cursing himself for not realizing this earlier especially after his use of it to lift whatever he had been creating before, he transformed the "tool" slightly, making it lose the timber handle and changing the slightly rusted root grabbing piece to become simply energy looking, which he assumed he could see but no one else could, after an incident with his aunt in the kitchen where he had to hastily convince her that he had just put down the egg whisk and didn't know where it was, when she had busted in on him making pancakes, he then made the piece dive into the ground and grab the plant root and lift, to his, not so much surprise but relief the weed came out beautifully

Much happier not having to manually do the backbreaking constant weeding of the garden typical of this time of year, Harry set to weeding the rest of the yard, with a disposition which matched, for once, the weather. He was at this time like any other gardener, happy out in the sun.


	4. Chapter 3 The Which and the Weather

Thanks for the reviews

Ceo55- first again, you're a gun glad you liked the chapter, I'm not going to pretend that I think everything I've written so far is entirely original there's simply too much fanfiction around (a lot that I have read and probably subconsciously copied) for that to be possible. However I'm quite sure my overall idea hasn't been done before and I hope you enjoy it, once it finally becomes apparent what it is. Also I will be taking certain elements from stories I like when I do this I will try to mention it however I'm terrible with names of fics so if you see something you recognize that will probably be why and feel free to point out if there's something you recognize and I'll put it up in the next chapter, thanks for the review.

Anthony37- no worries, thanks for reviewing. I do indeed have a rough idea, however the Harry/Multi on the preview is because it will be, there will probably not be any soulmate stuff in this story, really not my thing.

Mitremlap- If you check the earlier reviews, I think you'll find you're not alone :P

Lydia-Hood- I think you'll find that if you re-read the chapter, Harry physically fights Dudley, his magic has nothing to do with it. As for the redundancy of the chapter, I'm sorry you feel that way. I did mention the story will be a little slow to start with however it will pick up around chapter 3 and 4, I assure you everything in the earlier chapters is important as it sets the basis for the story. Thanks for the review and I hope you keep reading.

Juggler196- thanks very much I'm glad you're enjoying it, here you go!

Chapter 3

Harry's final year at primary school had passed without major incident. His marks were exponential as he needed to keep his skills sharp for his "work" at home lest he incur Vernon's wrath, during this Vernon had noted and berated him on his horrible handwriting, Harry for once agreed with his uncle and endeavored to work hard on it, he had read that in China a person's handwriting defined their personality, he liked the idea and created a style that did just that, it was angular and harsh yet beautiful. Whilst he used ballpoint in the study, he remembered from his research that there was an art called calligraphy which used the feathers of birds dipped in ink as pens, so finding a feather and figuring out how to create ink he had spent long hours practicing that as well.

At school he had also found that subjects which he found no interest in he could simply ask the teacher what the point of learning the topic was and she, being very fond of the polite intelligent boy, would go through examples with him of professions which would use the topic in question and why. Harry would then conduct his own private research and get a much better understanding of the subject and begin to excel at it.

He had also followed through on his promise to himself to start learning French, figuring that if things ever got too bad at the Dursleys he could always run away. Initially it had been difficult since he was only learning from the book and had no one to practice with however his ability to concentrate on a task overcame this and he now considered himself quite proficient in reading. He was also reasonably sure that if someone was speaking slowly enough he could have a basic conversation with them. Not that he'd had the chance to test it.

At school he he'd actually began to make tentative acquaintances with other children, without the constant threat of being bashed by Dudley and his gang the other kids actually found themselves starting to like the quiet handsome boy. Whilst Harry was happy to have the company at lunchtimes and occasionally on the weekends, if he finished the now horrendous amount of chores he had to do, he played his cards close to his chest and although a lot of the kids considered him friends, the feeling wasn't exactly mutual, they were not people he would happily disclose his hidden talents to or the details of his home life for that matter.

On the topic of chores, the word horrendous was almost too soft. With his developing special skills and the enormous amount of practice he got Harry was becoming quite the handyman and was getting through regular household chores with more than twice the speed that he normally would. Vernon and Petunia believed that it wouldn't do to have the boy "slacking off" as they put it and thus started assigning him lager tasks.

They started off with monotonous yet long jobs such as cleaning out the garage, however before long, just as Vernon had discovered his proficiency with mathematics, Harry was that good with bookkeeping by now he would easily be on a 40k salary, he noticed how he adapted to difficult tasks that were set to him, often deliberately to try and trip him up.

Harry very nervously reported to Vernon that the lawnmower wasn't running as well as it had been and was perhaps due for a service, Vernon, instead of hitting harry a couple of times, telling him off for how his disregard for Vernon's things would now cost him money and then packing the lawnmower into the car and taking it to the local small engine repair shop, simply got in the car and came back about an hour later with a bottle of oil, a packet which apparently contained something called a spark plug and a piece of Constantine folded paper held around the edges by blue rubber. Then with a nasty smile he said,

"All the tools you need are in the shed, and if I taste a speck of oil in my food when you cook dinner tonight, I'll tan your hide." Harry very nervously had wheeled the mower into the shed and stood staring at it for a good 5 minutes before noticing something that looked like the spark plug on the side with a piece of black rubber cord on it.

Pulling the cord off he realized that it looked exactly like the spark plug and by looking at the new one figured it was screwed into the engine. Not bothering to look for a wrench he made one to fit the plug out of energy and got it to spin counterclockwise and the plug came out easily. Once he had it in his hand he realized that it was quite dirty and that his task was obviously to replace it with the clean one. Using the same method he screwed it back in and pushed the rubber cap back on top. Figuring that was his object with the other parts as well he set about looking for the paper thing.

After walking around the mower twice and not finding anything he figured it must be under one of the black plastic covers, so making further wrenches and screwdrivers he quickly pulled off a couple of covers before he found the one that contained it. The original, too was dirty, so replacing that he figured all that was left was the oil. Knowing where that was as he checked the level every time he used the mower, he simply pulled the dipstick out and sent a wave of his energy into the bowels of the engine ordering it to suck all the dirty oil out. Not knowing what to do with it, he made a small amount of energy look like a glass jar and held it in it. Then he poured the fresh oil in up to the fill mark on the dipstick. Figuring that he had used everything he was given he pulled the cord and to his wonderment the mower ran beautifully. Looking at the oil in the jar he figured he could simply use his energy in the opposite way he normally did and simply turn it into air. He quickly separated the molecules changed them to oxygen and let them all go. Satisfied he went inside and made dinner, not forgetting to clean his hands thoroughly first.

Harry's weekends soon became filled with complicated specialist jobs like this. One weekend he was ordered to repaint the house, having no experience he had asked his uncle if he could do a little research first in the library to do it properly, his uncle "generously" agreed and also gave him the whole weekend to do it.

So marked a change in Harry's relationship with his family. His uncle would no longer demand tasks be done yesterday but rather demand they were done perfectly, that's not to say that they let him slack off by any stretch of the imagination though.

With his analytical mind he found himself competent at most of these tasks and if he was honest with himself he actually enjoyed the work; he noticed that he was stronger and fitter than the rest of the children his age because of it, especially now that he was being fed more. Petunia and Vernon had figured out that on the days where Harry ate more he did better work (and food was cheaper than labor) so they had figured that it wouldn't hurt to let him eat his fill if he continued to excel at his jobs.

What he did eat was never the wonderful food that he cooked for his relatives, it was more along the lines of vegetable off cuts and the occasional piece of poor quality meat but compared to the rest of his life it was paradise and he certainly wasn't complaining. He also suspected that his increasingly good physique had a lot to do with his diet. Dudley had certainly noticed this and had actually began cutting down on the rubbish he ate and started being more active in an effort to look a little bit better and keep up with his skinny cousin.

Both Harry and Dudley seemed to have one family trait in common; they were early bloomers. Despite both only being ten they had begun to go through puberty. Harry with his constant backbreaking work, his healthy diet and natural aloofness, intelligence and knowledge of the subject was making the change as gracefully as possible; the only thing that he would consider remotely embarrassing was his breaking voice.

Dudley on the other hand was in a shambles he was growing which meant his enormous bulk was becoming less obvious however his face was breaking out in pimples, he was constantly embarrassing himself in front of girls who he had only just began to notice and as Harry had noted in class, with a great deal of amusement, that there were many times when the lunchtime bell would ring and Dudley with a slightly red face would stay sitting at his desk until everyone else had left the classroom. That's not to say harry wasn't having that particular problem as well however having a excellent perception of time and a good concentration he was able to quell the feelings well before he was required to stand up.

Despite these, slight, for Harry, difficulties the school year had come and gone and the summer holidays had begun

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Harry was lying out in the sun. That is to say the bottoms of his legs were, the rest of him was underneath Vernon's BMW. A light was shining, oddly enough directly from his hand onto the page of a greasy book (another useful trick he had picked up, that one, for being so simple took a hell of a lot of research; light was complicated!). The book in question was telling him to remove the bolt above his head and catch the oil that came out. Harry with an improvised wrench did so. Servicing Vernon's expensive car was one of the new jobs he had now been entrusted with. Once the warranty had run out Vernon had seen no reason to continue to get the car serviced at the garage when he had a man for such a thing so Harry had been given one more "small" task to do.

He honestly didn't mind now, he had long ago given up hope that his relatives would treat him as family and ever since "the incident" he had had hardly a slap from his aunt or uncle.

What he now viewed himself as was a laborer who was paid with board and food. He enjoyed his free time when he got it but he also enjoyed his work especially the more challenging jobs. His aunt and uncle obviously viewed him as this as well; as they were certainly more civil to him. Occasionally Vernon would give harry more jobs than he could handle on the one day and he would actually listen when Harry told him (nervously) that it would probably take him more time to complete them, Vernon seemed to have a new view on things and obviously recognized Harry's competence; he seemed to value quality over quantity.

Finishing the car, and taking it for a sneaky test drive around the block, something that he had been doing ever since he began doing work on it and the reason he always did this job when his relatives were out for the day, Harry packed up his supplies "deleted," as he called it the old oil and cleaned himself up. Then he had a quick shower and wandered around to his friend's, well one of the guys he hung out with at school's place.

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Charles was a transfer to the local primary school in the last year. He and Harry had gotten along like a house on fire from the beginning. Charles was a jock pure and simple and if Harry was honest with himself, had he been at the school two years earlier Harry probably would have been running away from him whilst he chased him down with Dudley and his friends.

On the first day Charles came to the school he had looked around the room and walked right over to the coolest person there. Harry knew this because as their eyes met he had read his mind. Normally he would have ignored him or brushed him off but Harry was honestly flattered. He knew that he was changed from the boy he was a few years previously but it was the first time someone had thought him top of the pecking order.

Ever since whilst not quite being friends, Harry wasn't sure that he could quite be friends with anyone, they got along very well. During the holidays it had become a regular occurrence for Harry to go round to his place and muck around. Now to say Charles was a sport fanatic would be putting it lightly. He was a nut. Unlike normal English boys his passion wasn't soccer or cricket. No it was handball. His father had been on the Finnish national team some years ago and still played in division one team after moving to England.

So Harry and Charles's "mucking around" would usually take the form of hanging around in the backyard and throwing a ball around. Harry found he enjoyed the game immensely, he had never been one for sports before, with the meager amount of food he was given he really didn't have energy to spare, however now with his full stomach new muscles and his recent bouts of puberty fuelled testosterone he found he couldn't get enough.

Charles and he wouldn't actually play a game, they'd simply peg the ball at each other or wrestle each other for it until they were exhausted. Charles mother would then come and give them a glass of lemonade and they'd sit and chat about nothing in particular in the garden.

Arriving at Charles house Harry knocked, greeted his mother politely and made his way through the house to the backyard where he found Charles, already throwing a ball against the back wall and a quick "yo" from Harry had the ball in his hands.

The boys tossed the ball back and forward for a bit talking rubbish, about the kids in their year, the teachers and their high school.

"So looks like it's a definite then," Charles said with a bounce pass "we're both going to be Stonewallers next year"

"Yeah seems to be that way, should be good" harry replied "oh, funniest thing Dudley came home the other day with his Smeltings uniform, oh my god I nearly cracked a rib."

"Funny?"

"Mate, their uniform is maroon and orange and they have to wear this straw hat about 3 feet wide and they carry this stick around (which I'm assuming they use to bugger each other). Between all that, the socks pulled up further than their shorts and the man satchels they look like boy scouts crossed with fourteenths century British soldiers." The boys looked at each other for a second before cracking up.

"And, and, and, get this," said Harry gasping for air, "he spent the rest of the day trying to convince me that 'I'd' get 'my' head shoved down the toilet on the first day of high school" this was evidently too much for Charles who actually collapsed to the ground laughing, Harry, halfway there already, soon joined him.

"Boys….." Charles's mother had appeared at the back door carrying a tray looking at the two ten year olds rolling around on the ground she shook her head, "riiiggghhtt, your father and I are going out for a couple of hours, so here's some drinks and snacks and if you go down the park Charles please lock up. Bye darling, goodbye Harry"

"See you mum"

"Goodbye Mrs. Scale"

"It's actually getting a bit too warm out here don't you think Harry"

"Yeah defiantly, what did you want to do?"

"Umm, I thought we could go and throw on the tube for a bit"

"Sure."

Retiring to the lounge room, not forgetting the snack and drink tray the boys conversation turned back to Stonewall. Unlike Smeltings, Stonewall was a day school so Harry and Charles would be at home all year still. Harry assumed this was because the Dursleys wanted to keep him around to do stuff for them and secondly because boarding schools were expensive.

"So anyway, I hear the parties can get pretty wild over there. Lots of girls to go round if you get what I mean" Charles said to harry whilst needling his ribs with his elbow, Harry taking a quick peek in Charles's mind was positive he knew what he meant better than Charles did whilst he tried to give off the impression of being mature, Charles was anything but. Harry had no qualms about looking into his mates mind as he viewed it as an extension of his regular senses the same way he would have no problem listening to what someone was saying right in front of him. He kept his opinion to himself though as Charles continued, "I hear that everyone gets really drunk, wonder what that's like…" now this, was a subject Harry was interested in. He had heard enough about drinking at school and had seen his uncle do it enough and he always managed to have a good time, even if in his younger years that good time involved putting the boot into Harry, so a very large part of him was curious.

"Yeah, my uncle gets sloshed pretty regularly and he always seems to have a good time."

"You know what we should do?"

"What"

"Well... my parents have a got a stash if you get what I'm saying…." Harry looked at the other boy and was about to firmly put that idea down he didn't need trouble, but then again he thought, this wasn't the Dursley household and he was intrigued by the idea.

"Alright…" he said tentatively, Charles who had obviously been waiting to do this for ages jumped out of the couch and was back less than thirty seconds later with a bottle of a brown liquid and two small glasses. He poured two and handed one to harry

"To our good health" he said and tipped his back, Harry imitating him did the same, and was hit by pain.

"Urrgh, it's like drinking fire" he said, Charles who was in a similar predicament indicated his agreement non – verbally. Then after about a minute

"Do you want another" Harry looked at the bottle, whilst he knew it would hurt he also remembered a good feeling, which he couldn't quite place, so nodded his head. After downing the second glass he was wondering what the hell he was thinking, it hurt alright, however there was nothing good about it. Yet he still wanted another! Just as he was holding his glass out for a refill he heard something behind him. Turning around he noticed a blonde girl about a year younger than him, who he recognized as Charles's sister, Janine. Hastily shoving his glass behind him, he heard a noise indicating that Charles was doing the same with the bottle and his glass.

"What are you doing, Charles?"

"Umm, nothing, what's up?"

"Just wondering where mum and dad are"

"Oh they went out for a bit…"

"They left some snacks though" Harry interjected, trying to sound natural and too his delight succeeding, he was after all well practiced in the art of untruths, "Biscuit," he said offering the tray.

"Sure thanks Harry" and taking a biscuit she headed back up the stairs.

"Whew that was a close one, she totally would have ratted us out to mum"

"You reckon?" Harry replied, doubting it "ah well, all's well that ends well, anyway mate I'd better get back it's getting late."

"Sure, catch you later"

"You too mate" Harry jumped up and noticed that he felt a tiny bit wobbly on his feet. Not caring much he walked the couple of blocks home in a good mood hardly noticing at all the way he didn't seem to be able to keep a straight line. Arriving at the door of number four, tittering to himself about how that rhymed, he reached out to open it and walked in, only to find that he'd missed the handle and had walked into the door. Shaking his head he tried again and managed no problem.

Picking up the letters on the carpet which had been delivered that day he started flicking through them, wandered into Vernon's study deposited what looked like a bill and a postcard from Vernon's sister Marge who Harry was delighted to find out was ill, ate a funny whelk apparently, Harry privately thought that if she wasn't so fat she'd be fine and, he thought, if she didn't want her mail read then she should put it in an envelope. Then he went into the sitting room where he found his aunt with a cup of tea,

"Mail, Aunt Petunia" he said, wordlessly she held out her hand and he deposited another postcard in her hand. Then heading upstairs to Dudley's room he knocked on the door and slid an official looking envelope under the door which looked to have Smeltings crest on it. Going back downstairs to his cupboard he threw the last envelope inside without looking at it and went to the kitchen to make dinner, still in a happy mood.

After dinner his happy buzz had worn off and Harry was exhausted. Excusing himself from the room, after cleaning up of course, he went to the cupboard and fell into a deep slumber.

Awakening in the morning, still at the right time but with a lot more grogginess than he was used too, Harry blinked his eyes owlishly, before they fell on the letter that he had thrown inside last night. At the time, no doubt due to being under the influence, he hadn't given a second thought to it, but now he had a couple of reasons to do so. Firstly he had never gotten a letter in his life, sure he'd had letters delivered about him such as his report card however they were always addressed to his aunt or uncle. However this was clearly addressed to him. Very clearly.

Mr. Harry J Potter

The cupboard under the stairs

4 Privet Drive. Little Whining

Surrey

The other thing that was unusual was the letter itself, it was written on a thick lovely parchment, like something you'd expect out of a fairy tale, however instead of being old and yellowing it was a nice ivory colour and fresh. The handwriting, which was unusual for a start (aside from postcards who hand wrote letters?) Was also a beautiful looping job done in green ink and clearly done with a nibbed pen rather than a ballpoint. Harry's competitive nature came to the fore a little as he noted the handwriting whilst nice was a fair bit more feminine than his also beautiful yet angular masculine script.

Opening the envelope Harry found a letter which would change his life forever:

Dear Mr. Potter

We are delighted to inform you that you have been accepted to Hogwarts School of witchcraft and wizardry. Term starts on the 1st of September and we await your owl by no later than the 31st of July.

Please find enclosed a list of supplies and your ticket for the Hogwarts express which leaves at 10 o'clock sharp on the first day of term.

Yours Sincerely

Professor M McGonagall

Deputy Headmistress

Harry was shocked for about half a second, but then thinking about all the things he could do quelled the protests from his mind. Slightly disappointed that he wasn't the only one with these apparently amazing abilities, he reasoned at least he knew what to call it now – Magic.

Flicking through the rest of the envelope he found the ticket which told him to take the train from platform 9 and ¾, which he figured was a question for later, and the aforementioned supply list. He had to laugh, wizards they apparently were. Black robes, pointed hats- for day wear, Harry's school uniform was apparently going to be putting Dudley's to shame in terms of ludicrousness, although considering the wand (which he couldn't figure out why that was needed) and the dragon hide gloves (which sounded cool provided they weren't just a brand name) he assumed he could look quite menacing, although he'd still probably still have to lose the hat.

Truly showing his age, for once, Harry without a second thought decided that this was something he was defiantly going to do. He quickly conjured (he figured he may as well start using the lingo) a pen and paper and wrote out a quick reply being careful to ensure his handwriting was as immaculate as always; Confirming indeed yes he was going to be coming and could they please send someone to help him collect his supplies. Using a neat trick, that he'd picked up when he'd begun trying to do truly unnatural yet simple tasks to test the limits of his powers, he sealed the paper in a roll without a seam and assuming that the odd line about an owl was just a weird way to say letter, attempted to conjure a stamp.

Figuring he had seen enough although never having actually used one himself he was sure that he could do it however when he picked it up he had the same wrong feeling that he had found those two years ago when he had first made the gold. Not quite understanding it but knowing from experience that creating things properly that gave off the feeling was, up to this point, impossible, he "deleted" the stamp and went outside with the intent of heading down the post office and begging a stamp of someone. Walking out the front door he was greeted by a most unusual sight there was an owl sitting atop the water fountain, its eyes were squeezed shut and it looked, in Harry's opinion quite indignant at being stuck outside in the rapidly brightening sunshine.

Harry being quite perceptive guessed that the two unusual events, the letter and the owl, weren't just coincidences and were probably connected.

"Umm, hello?" he asked feeling stupid for talking to a bird. The bird in question however lazily opened one vivid yellow eye and looked at him, then the other and hooted softly in what he could only deduce was a greeting. Harry was about to ask if it had brought the letter, the cryptic sentence in it about awaiting the owl suddenly made more sense, but, he thought, that's a stupid idea, even if it can understand there's no way it could reply. So he took the easier option let a strand of energy, or magic as he supposed he should call it, waft out of his eyes and into the eyes of the owl and started to gently look through a sea of memories, ignoring the strange feelings (which he assumed were the owls senses) that came with them he focused on the visual images.

A starlit night, looking down he saw an ivory envelope grasped gently in his talons, a compulsive urge to travel in the direction that he was going, a ghostly image of his own face, his cupboard, his house, his street superimposed of the top. Shaking his head at the odd memory Harry went back further, a candlelit room a tall handsome woman wearing a robe and a wrinkled pointed hat walking towards him, handing out a letter in one hand, a piece of bacon in the other,

"Wait for a reply." Was the instruction, Harry assumed this was the professor mentioned in the letter. Ducking back inside the house; he cut a bit of fat off the lamb chops he was going to make for dinner that night and came back outside. Handing the letter to the owl in one hand and the fat in the other like he had seen the professor do, he really hoped that no one was watching. The owl had no such issues it grabbed the fat gulped it down in one go, gave a hoot of what Harry assumed was thanks, grabbed the letter and took off.

"And now," thought Harry, "we wait"


	5. Chapter 4 Has Beans and will Bees

Sh8ad8ow, ORKCHILD ,Renjiyamato, Zicou, Shoveler, Ex10 - thanks for the reviews!

WL Chastain – I noticed that you reviewed from chapter 2 as the fic progresses the paragraphs are a bit smaller I'm sure, however I base my paragraph changes on what's happening in the text so if there's a long one it's just due to the fact that it's a large amount of information on the one topic. Having said that thanks for the criticism and I really appreciate the review!

Ceo55 – Thanks again and I apoligise that he's not in Diagon Alley in this chapter however I thought it better to post something rather than keep everyone waiting for another week or so. Also I think you need to read the blurb a little closer with regards to Harry's house!

Tumshie, bakapervert – I have responded via pm

Thanks for the reviews and keep reading!

Chapter 4

The rest of the day passed slowly, incredibly slowly Harry tried to keep himself busy with his chores but nothing could distract him from the fact that soon enough he would be getting a visit from somebody just like him, who too could do magic, who could answer his questions and more importantly could teach him more.

He waited and he waited however dinner passed and there was no return mail and no visitors. Going to bed severely disappointed Harry was suddenly stuck by the thought, tomorrow was the 31st of July, his birthday and in his excitement he hadn't noticed.

Not that his birthdays were ever fun, they were to him the day when he turned a year older, in fact he hadn't known he even had had one until he went to school. The teacher had asked everyone what theirs was and Harry feigning ignorance, he knew even at that young age that no one aside from himself could change his situation, had told her that he had forgotten, the teacher had laughed and checked his file for him.

Oh he knew that other children, especially Dudley, got loads of presents and a party and all sorts of things however he knew this wasn't true for himself and if he was honest he wasn't sure how he would even accept a gift.

Once upon a time he guessed, before his parents died, however that happened, he too had been the beneficiary of gifts and love however those days were long gone and it was hard to miss what you can't remember. Having said that though, Harry thought as he drifted off to sleep he wouldn't mind a good party.

BANG CRASH

Harry awoke to the sound of what sounded like the front door being blown off its hinges. Rushing into the corridor he discovered that that's exactly what had happened, well almost, it was actually knocked out of its frame by an extremely large man hunched in the door frame.

Thinking quickly Harry created a energy (or magic he corrected himself) blade, which he made to look like one of the kitchen knives only with a blindingly hot tip, behind his back so as to look as though he'd just pulled if from his trousers. Facing the giant he yelled trying to sound as intimidating as possible

"Who are you? What do you want?" the intimidation factor failed on two counts, firstly because Harry was about as tall as the man was wide, secondly because his voice cracked halfway through the sentence.

The man chuckled which Harry found infuriating however he couldn't argue the point. "I'm Hagrid," said the giant through a thick bushy beard, his eyes crinkled with what Harry assumed was a smile, "Rubeus Hagrid, keeper of the keys and grounds at Hogwarts." Harry now realizing that there was no threat was still confused, his extremely accurate innate sense of time was telling him that it was about 3 o'clock in the morning.

"Riiiiiiigggghhtt," he drawled out "so you broke down the door,"

"umm yeah, mm sorry about that" said Hagrid looking sheepishly at the door lying halfway down the corridor. "migha knocked a bit too har' there"

"why didn't you just come…. Ahhhhhhhhhhh….. tomorrow morning?" Harry asked unable to stifle a huge yawn. This appeared to be the question Hagrid had been waiting for has his rate of voice picked up considerably and his glittering black eyes came down and slightly to his right indicating he was repeating something he learned by rote, just because you can read peoples' minds didn't mean you always had to,

"ah well we heard you weren't getting your letters and we wanted to sort it out as soon as possible." Hagrid spealed "ya see ya folks were at Hogwarts and greater friends I never had, they were head boy and girl in their day, you'll be knowing all about Hogwarts of course, anywa…"

"wait a second" harry interrupted. "You said that you heard that I hadn't been getting my letters. I just sent you a reply saying I'd received it and would be coming."

"ahh right, yeah ummm…"

"forget it," harry said realizing that he wouldn't get much information out of the apparently thick giant "so let's get down to it, first things first can you fix the door?"

"ah well I dun know abou' tha' arry'," hagrid said looking sheepish again, "ya see I'm not supposed to do magic…"

"I don't care, if you can't do magic, I'll get you a screw driver" Hagrid looked absolutely terrified at the thought of this,

"ah I guess one tinah bita magic wouldn' hur'" he walked to the door, picked it up with one hand and walked back to the entrance. Harry who was dying to see how a trained wizard wielded their magic was extremely surprised when Hagrid produced a large pink frilly umbrella from inside his coat, pointed it at the door and mumbled something which Harry thought was along the lines of "repara."

Watching the door he was amazed to see the hinges bend back into shape, the screws reinsert themselves and even the splinters of wood reattach to the frame and door all done by little waves of magic the warm white hue as his own.

Perhaps this school would be extremely beneficial he thought, as he inspected the job and realized that whilst he could have done the same thing, it would have taken him a few painstaking hours with his skills, especially the reattachment of the splinters. It still didn't however, explain the umbrella.

"So where's your wand" Harry asked, after looking quite proud of his work Hagrid was back to looking sheepish

"Yeah well ya see, when I was in third year I was expelled, snapped me wan' clean in half..."

"right…"

"so now I gotta use this," he said waving the umbrella around, this time the eyes went up and to the right, indicating an invented story, Harry suspected one that he had told numerous times before. Harry noted a sharper person would have been able to disguise the lie properly by this time however Hagrid didn't seem too bright he also suspected that it wasn't a flat out lie more a half truth, because if his imagination was at all accurate then the umbrella would be the perfect place to conceal a snapped wand, which he assumed was illegal. He let the topic drop because he wasn't exactly planning on being the most upstanding citizen himself and he was much more interested in something else Hagrid had mentioned.

"you said you got expelled in your third year", Harry probed, "what was that for?"

"Umm I raised an Acrumantula in my dorm," at Harrys raised eyebrow he elaborated "it's a kinda spider, bout nine feet long." Harry was frankly impressed,

"wow, that's kind of cool! So you can get expelled for that?"

"yeah, Aragog was beautifoool, but I wouldn't recommend it."

Above him Harry heard the sound of something the size of a baby rhino getting out of bed. "Here comes the cavalry he thought." Hagrid (who had no idea about what the noise was) and Harry looked up the stairs to see Harry's purple faced uncle, puffing from exhaustion coming down.

"What's going here boy?" Vernon thundered, then his eyes caught sight of the giant standing in the corridor, "and who are you?" his voice all of a sudden becoming quite squeaky. Harry jumped in here with an attempt to make the situation as calm as possible.

"Hagrid, this is my uncle Vernon Dursley. Uncle Vernon this is … Rubus?... Hagrid"

"Rubeus" said Hagrid, "nice ta meetcha Mista Dursley"

"Likewise," then turning his attention to Harry "what the hell is he doing here at," a brief pause whilst he looked at the clock on the mantle then yelped in a strangled voice, "three o'clock in the blessed a.m."

"I've come to take 'arry to geh his 'ogwarts supplies" said Hagrid proudly slapping Harry on the back which sent him flying almost to the floor. Vernons purple face turned bone white in about half a second flat.

"His what?"

" 'is 'ogwarts supplies, ya see 'arry here needs somebody ta go ta Diagon Alley wit' 'im, 'n' I'm the…." This whole time Vernon's face had been doing a lovely transition from bone, to bleached porcelain and then to almost green but he eventually gathered himself up.

"Now listen here boy, I don't know what these freaks have been telling you but, you're better off without their lot, if you buy into that nonsense you'll go the same sticky way as your parents they…" Vernon realized he'd gone too far

"yes Uncle Vernon?" Harry asked sweetly, "you were just telling me how my parents didn't die in a car crash."

"A car crash kill Lily and James Potter?" Hagrid had inconveniently decided to butt in, his voice raised, he continued " 'arry'll be a damn fine wizard once he's trained up a bit you'll see!" By this stage the noise of the shouting had brought Aunt Petunia, who too was white as a sheet from what she had heard, and Dudley downstairs to see what was happening. "If 'e wants to go then there's nothing a bunch o' muggles like you can do to stop 'im, 'e'll be under the tutelage of the finest wizard of the age Albus Dum..."

"He's not going do you hear me," Vernon screamed, "I'll not pay for some crackpot old fool to teach him magic tricks!" This stopped the 'conversation' cold Hagrid's face went blank and a hideously dangerous look came over his eyes. He pulled out his umbrella and started swinging it over his head.

"Never," he said thundered, "insult Albus Dumbledore in front of me!" he brought the umbrella swishing down to wind up pointing at Dudley "_PORCINIA_."

Harry jumped on Hagrids arm dragging the umbrella down, a jet of pink light, which Harry assumed everyone could see judging by the way they were all looking where it went, hit a pot on the mantle which immediately sprouted a curly pigs tail.

"What are you doing," Harry hissed at Hagrid sounding quite intimidating himself (must remember that thought harry, hiss don't bellow). "Keep your temper, if you do something to him, you walk away, I've got to deal with the fallout."

Harry turned around to find the three Dursleys had vanished, honestly, Harry couldn't blame them.

"I'm sorrah 'bout tha' 'arry" Hagrid said with an air of embarrassment, "it's just Dumbledore's a grea' man 'n' it really works me up when folks badmou' 'im."

"Forget it" rubbing his hand through his hair, as he had taken to doing this year at school after he saw a couple of girls looking dreamily at him as he did it, he let it flop back neatly over his forehead and walking towards the kitchen and beconing hagrid to follow, called out behind him "alright well you're here now, would you like a cup of tea or something before we grab a couple of hours sleep?

"yeah tea woul' be great thanks 'arry" said Hagrid

"something to eat?" Harry asked figuring if what he ate was good enough for him Hagrid could eat it as well.  
>"oh," said Hagrid, "tha' reminds me," he fished around in his pockets for a bit and pulled out a packet of butchers paper and slapped it on the table.<p>

"I was gonna have these for breaky anyway." Still fishing he pulled out a slightly crushed white cardboard box, "an' 'ere you go, migh'a sat on it at some poin' but should still taste alrigh', Happy Birthday 'arry."

Harry took the box, opened it and was greeted by, as Hagrid had said, a slightly crushed chocolate cake which had "Happy Birthday Harry" written on it in green icing. Harry didn't know what to think having never received a cake or gift in his life. Feeling actually a little embarrassed Harry stammered out a thanks and moved his attention to the package with the butchers paper which was an easier topic.

"They're sausages, if you can lend us a saucepan I can get a fire going and cook em up." Harry gave Hagrid a bewildered look walked over and turned on the oven

"I can manage" he said with a slight note of sarcasm, "how many should I put on, are you very hungry?" Hagrid looked at him and chuckled,

"oh i'm a big eater 'arry, throw em all on" Harry grinned looking over, once he had been allowed to he was a big enough eater himself, however he was sure that the enormous man would put him to shame, just to be safe he put a few vegetables in the oven as well. Handing hagrid his tea, Harry asked,

"so come tomorrow morning, well later tomorrow morning, what are we doing?"

"Well 'arry were going to go to Diagon Alley to get your supplies, normally we'd floo but since you live in a muggle house well take public transport.

"That's the second time I've heard you say that, muggle, what does it mean?"

"Oh that's a word for folks who are non magical, like your family." Wincing slightly at the word family Harry said, mainly to himself,

"wow that's… really derogatory!"

"What's that Harry"

"never mind, so that spell you did to fix the door, that looked really complicated, how did that work?"

"Ah no 'arry that's an easy spell" Harry with surprise looked at the large man thinking perhaps he'd underestimated him,

"so how does it work"

"well ya just say the words, "_reparo"_ and wave your wand just such" Hagrid demonstrated with the knife that Harry had set out for him.

"Yeah," said harry being careful to keep an eye on the blade, "I saw that, how does that work though?" this apparently stumped Hagrid as he fumbled for words whilst he was saying,

"well, umm… that's just what the books said to do" Harry took a look at the memories that were brought up by that particular sentence. Often people had trouble expressing themselves properly with words alone despite knowing exactly what they wanted to convey however all harry saw was exactly what Hagrid was telling him. Obviously there was some information that he was missing, after all Harry had studied tirelessly to be able to do what he did and a spell like that would take forever to execute.

He and Hagrid chatted for a bit more whilst they waited for the food to cook, Hagrid explained to Harry what his job was at Hogwarts and how he dealt with the animals and tended the grounds. Despite finding him a bit dim Harry liked the large man, he appealed to his sense of hard work and fair play.

After the sausages and vegetables were ready the conversation turned to Harry's parents time at Hogwarts with whom Hagrid was apparently very good friends.

Harry didn't quite know what to think really after all he couldn't remember his parents and really did appreciate all the tidbits of information, however at the same time it was just out of curiosity.

"… Head boy and girl they was in their time" Hagrid finished

" so how does that work exactly?"

" well generally," said Hagrid through a mouthful of sausage, "sorry arry," swallowing he continued " you become a prefect in your house and then the top pick of all the prefects from all the houses goes on to be the 'ead boy or girl in their seventh year, 'owever very occasionally someone doesn't 'ave to be a prefect; such as your father"

"Houses?" Harry asked.

" Sorry 'arry I keep forgetting how little you know," Harry grimaced "there are four 'ouses a' 'ogwarts you'll get sorted into one of em when you arrive and it'll be your home for your time there. Believe me you'll make some great friends whatever house you get sorted into. Anyway there's Gryffindor which is where all the brave people go, Ravenclaw for all the smart booky ones, Hufflepuff for all the hard workers and Slytherin for all the evil ones anyw…"

" Sorry what?" asked Harry "the evil ones?"

"Oh yeah" said Hagrid, "weren't never a witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't from Slytherin." Ignoring the triple negative Harry had a peek at Hagrids memories regarding this topic, he came up with two firstly him and another boy, whom Hagrid knew as "Tom Riddle," wearing black robes with a green crest on them in a dormitory style room, the other boy who looked a little older than Hagrid in the memory was sending what Harry assumed were spells, from a wand, at an enormous scuttling spider, Harry guessed this was the infamous Aragog Hagrid referred to earlier. Another memory he found was a lot more interesting it was of Hagrid and an elderly man with a large white beard whom Hagrid knew to be Albus Dumbledore the headmaster of Hogwarts, planting ideas in Hagrids head about mentioning how bad Slytherin is to Harry, of course Hagrid didn't realize this however Harry was quite the expert at manipulating people's opinions and recognized it immediately. Knowing that he wouldn't get any more information from Hagrid he moved on however he noted to himself that he should be very wary around the headmaster who obviously had some plans for him.

"So what house were you in?"

" oh I was a Hufflepuff," said Hagrid looking a bit ashamed of this, Harry who couldn't understand why anyone would be ashamed of being a hard worker said,

" yeah I bet you were, from what you've told me about how hard you work at your job I bet there was no question."

" Yeah," said Hagrid looking a bit more chipper "people say that Hufflepuffs are a load of old duffers but I had some great times there!"

Getting more excited the more he and Hagrid spoke about Hogwarts, Harry couldn't wait to head off in the morning. Hagrid noticing this said,

"right then 'arry, we should be heading ofta bed, gotta' big day tomorrow."

Harry lead hagrid to the lounge room where he told him he could either sleep on the couch or the floor, considering Hagrid's head came past one end of the couch whilst his knees flopped over the other Harry thought that he made the wise decision to choose the floor.

Harry went back to his cubboard and was asleep in seconds.


	6. Chapter 5 Because This is the Time

Juggler196, ceo55,sh8ad8ow, anthony37,SimFlyer, bakapervert, JzeHampen, Dark Dragen- thanks for the reviews!

WL Chastain – I'm so glad that someone enjoyed reading that line as much as I enjoyed writing it. OK point conceded about the paragraphs, unfortunately there's a couple of long ones in this chapter however I hope you'll bear with me I was struggling to find a point to chop them.

The DragonBard- Fair enough I didn't actually know that, still for the purposes of this story (not that there is a huge amount of purpose) Hagrid will remain a Hufflepuff, I also think he would have been, look how loyal he is.

AlaskanKing – sorry about Hagrid, I'm having too much fun writing him, there's a bit more of it in this chapter… The abuse has a point a bit later in the story.

FluffyNevyn – sounds like you came up with an interesting plot bunny if you write it let me know I'll be glad to read haha.

Thank you to everyone for the reviews and a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE. I'll also say HAPPY NEW YEAR as there's no way that I'll have another chapter out before 2012 so stay safe and I hope you enjoy…

Chapter 5

The next day Harry was up bright and early despite missing quite a bit of sleep the night before, no rest for the wicked after all.

He got through a few of the quieter chores, some outside and some inside before throwing together a continental breakfast which he could serve and leave.

He then roused Hagrid and mentioned that it might be a good idea to leave before the Dursleys were awake, Hagrid whilst looking a little disappointed at leaving before breakfast did however see the logic in this. He mentioned that that might stop for a bite in a pub he knew close to where they were going, Harry, who very very rarely ate out whole heartedly agreed.

The two made an odd pair heading into London on the train. Harry had made this and similar trips many times before; preferring to get as far away from the house as he could whenever he got the opportunity and as such knew exactly what he was doing. Hagrid on the other hand was completely lost, he got stuck in ticket barriers, he got on the wrong train and would often point to completely ordinary things such as cars and say in an extremely loud whisper,

"ya see 'arry the things them muggles dream up."

Oh and there was also the fact that he was knitting what seemed to be a bright yellow circus tent.

Once they actually got to London harry let Hagrid take over the navigation and despite the difficulties before, he took to the task admirably once they were just walking. He still kept up with the odd comments about things such as bus stops but at least he seemed to know where he was halfway down Charring Cross Road Hagrid pointed out a little pub and said,

"ah 'ere we are The Leaky Cauldron, 'sa famous place,"

Harry had a good look at the dingy little pub and noticed some slight wisps of magic floating around it which seemed to stretch out and touch the heads of passersby, no one seemed to notice this or for that matter the pub, realizing that the wisps didn't touch him or Hagrid he assumed that this was some sort of charm to keep away people who weren't magical shaking his head at the ingenuity he continued his observations.

The pub looked very old English in style and was quite out of place on the busy road. Following Hagrid inside Harry saw why it was known as famous; it was packed. The inside had a very homely feel decorated in old, yet well polished timber and the place had a smell of hot meat, bread and hops.

The barman who was also extremely old and toothless yet friendly looking, looked up the moment they walked in the door.

"The usual Hagrid?" he asked, Harry was a bit surprised considering it was only 9:30 in the morning and was quite relieved when Hagrid replied,

"ah, no tanks Tom, jus' a couple of cups of tea 'n'a full English each, we'll be sitting over in tha' booth."

Harry was momentarily taken aback as the only other Tom he had heard of in the wizarding world was the one in Hagrid's memory and that handsome boy was a far cry from the wizened barkeep, he shook himself, obviously there's lots of people called tom he thought, chastising himself for being so naive he followed Hagrid over the booth.

"Hagrid," Harry asked once they were seated, "How am I going to pay for all my school things? Is there like a fund for disadvantaged children? I'm sure you figured from last night my uncle won't pay."

" Oh, ya folks left you a bit a money 'arry, not much mind, but certainly enough ta getcha through 'ogwarts." Relieved Harry settled into the comfy leather seat and waited for his breakfast.

It took probably less than five minutes before their breakfast arrived carried, oddly enough by a motley green creature that came up to about Harry's waist and even then only with the help of it's extremely large pointy ears. Laying out the plates and cups it squeaked whilst pouring the tea,

"how do you like your tea sirs?" Hagrid didn't seem to find anything wrong with this and asked for cream and 2 sugars, Harry deciding to follow suit for now simply had black. After a mumbled thanks from Harry and Hagrid the creature which had done an admirable job of pouring the tea, considering its eyes were below the table level left.

"Umm Hagrid," Harry said, "what was that?"

"Tha' were a 'ouse elf, their a kinda servent, help out around the bar do the cooken' serven' 'n' stuff, dead usful, rich folks 'ave 'em at 'ome as well."

"Why don't they just employ people?"

"Well elves are cheaper, well free actually."

"Free!" Harry yelped, " you mean they're like slaves?"

"Calm down 'arry," Hagrid replied waving his massive hands at him, "it's not as bad as it sounds, yeah there's a few folk out there who do treat em bad, 'n' no one agrees wit' tha'. But whatcha gotta understand is that in the magical world there's creatures that don' act like you or I, they've got different needs.

Ya see 'ouse elves they need to work and they need ta 'ave a master or otherwise they'll die, they live off it ya see, there's bin a few muggleborns," at harry's blank look he elaborated,

"folks with muggle parents who are a witch or wizard there'll be plen'y a' school, who have tried to "free" the elves as it were. Ya gotta understand though where magics concerned things aren' tha' simple, there's reasons for everything, I'm jus' sayin' try'n have a think about the reasons behind something before you star' sayin it's no' right, 'ave a chat to some elves a' 'ogwarts if you like, there's abou' a 'undred there they'll tell you the same thing."

Mollified Harry started eating. "So about my parents," he asked after a bit, " I know that they didn't die in a car accident and you seem to know what happened…?"

"Ah I'm not sure tha' im the right one ta be tellin' ya this 'arry."At harry's look he contined

"But then again ya gotta know, ya see bou fifteen years ago there was this wizard he went bad, real bad, wanted ta rule the world or somtin, reckoned that magic should be restricted to folks of all magical bloodlines, anyway he started killin people, good people an' 'e was gaining power and supporters too, lotta folks thought that 'e had the right idea. But there was a lotta people who stood up to him, mahself, Dumbledore, mosta the profferors a' 'ogwarts a' the time and ya folks all included.

Your parents, 'arry, they was a real thorn in 'is side they were, he started going after em personally just after you were born, so youse all went inta hidin'. Anyway twas fine for a bit but after a one 'alloween jus' after ya firs' birthday 'e foundja, 'n' 'e came in ta ya house 'n' 'e killed ya dad, 'n' 'e killed ya mum, and then" Hagrid looked at him tears filling his eyes,

" 'e tried ta kill ya. But 'e couldn't no one know's why, something abou' ya stumped 'im. I pulled you out of the ruins of ya house meself, you were fine 'cept for this massive burn on your forehead, and there weren't a sign o' him, just some scorched robes lyin on the floor. Took ya to ya aun' 'n' uncles 'ouse meself. What cha gotta understand is your famous in this world cos o' whatcha did, or didn't do, people are gonna wanna be friends wit' ya just for that, jus' make sure your discernin' with folks ya trust"

Harry was a bit shocked at this news, after all he was used to being no one of interest and now he was told that he was famous. He was also surprised at Hagrid's insight; he was obviously a bit wiser than he appeared.

Finishing their breakfast, which really hit the spot, Harry and Hagrid made their way through the pub to the back where they found themselves in a little courtyard Hagrid pulled out his umbrella again and tapped a brick on the wall, Harry, who had already suspected something about the wall due the little wisps of magic around it, was only a little bit shocked when the magic increased tenfold in intensity and the bricks started swirling in place morphing into a magnificent archway.

Harry's mouth must have been hanging open because Hagrid shot him a grin and said with a wave of his arm and a flourish, "welcome, 'arry, to Diagon Alley"

The alley was, no, there was no other way to put it magical. It was like stepping back in time, people walking round in robes and hats purchasing things like dragon liver from apothecaries and buying cauldrons using little hand minted coins. Harry was enthralled, stopping and absorbing what was going on. Hagrid had moved on ahead before realizing that his charge wasn't coming with him, when he went back and dragged him ahead. "Come on 'arry there'll be plenty of time for gawking after we get ya some money."

Hagrid seemed to be leading harry towards a large white building at the end of the alley, which as they got closer proclaimed itself to be 'Gringotts.' Hagrid informed him that this was the bank. As they walked towards it Harry hissed to Hagrid, "what are those things with the axes?"

"Ah" said Hagrid looking a little apprehensive, "those'd be goblins."

"Goblins…" repeated Harry in a quiet voice as they were approaching the short yet extremely intimidating creatures who were guarding the enormous double doors leading to the bank.

"Yeah," said Hagrid pausing his gait for a second. "Listen 'arry you remember what I told you about the elves,"

"yeah"

"well goblins are similar, 'cept instead o' servitude, for them it's cruelity. Ya a smar' lad figure it ou' for yaself, word o' warning though, don' get on a goblins bad side." he then turned and continued his walk inside the bank. Pausing only briefly to hand Harry a tiny golden key, informing him it was for his vault.

Harry looked around once they were inside and thought they must have done another time jump, this time forwards to about the 1920s the entire inside of the bank was polished marble and the tellers desks were beautiful hardwood. Behind each one was a goblin going about day to day tasks whether chewing on a feather quill whilst reading a piece of parchment or weighing a stack of rubies the size of fists.

Steeling his nerve and squaring his shoulders he walked up to the nearest available teller. After standing there for about thirty seconds without being noticed he coughed to get the creatures attention.  
>"Excuse me," he said, sounding much braver than he thought. "I'd like to make a withdrawal please" the goblin looked at him as though this request was of a great deal of annoyance, which harry found odd, wasn't that meant to be his job, then again, he reasoned human bank tellers wouldn't be much different. "Vault number?" the goblin asked,<p>

"687" said Harry squinting to read the ornate writing off the key Hagrid had given him.

"Very well, Radgog will take you down to the vault" another goblin who seemed to have appeared from nowhere led them out of the main hall and through another arch.

Whilst the bank was polished marble through this arch was cold grey stone. The goblin indicated the two wizards to climb aboard a rickety old cart on a set of mining rails and the climbed into the front himself.

"Hold on" he said with a nasty grin and jammed a lever at the front of the cart forward causing Harry to fly backwards into Hagrid and almost knock them both over the edge.

Flying along the rails at what Harry could only guess to be in excess of sixty miles per hour with the wind whistling in his face he looked around at the 'scenery;' the rails they were on would sometimes be sitting on nothing more than a stack of rocks as wide as his waist which would extend down at the same thickness as deep as the eye could see, obviously, to Harry, these were held up with magic has he could see the hue around them but it was still quite scary.

The track seemed to branch off in multiple directions every thirty feet but Radgog didn't seem to be steering as there was only one control on the cart and his entire attention was focused on pushing it as far forwards as he possibly could.

Risking a glance behind him Harry saw that Hagrid was obviously having trouble keeping down his breakfast, grimacing at the thought, and hoping he could keep it in until they made it to the vault, Harry tried to ignore the impending waterfall of tea, bacon and eggs and turned to face the front.

Just as the thought passed through his head the cart slowed down. Well it didn't slow down so much as it stopped suddenly, with the squealing sound of iron on steel and a huge shower of sparks. Rubbing his head where he had bumped it on the handhold Harry clambered out and looked at the stone door with the number 687 on it. Walking up to it, he ran his fingers over it and found the tiny hole which had been caked in dust after years of inactivity. Putting the key inside he turned it and pulled the door open.

Inside he was greeted by two piles of coins one largish one made up exclusively of gold coins and a smaller one with mainly gold and an assortment of silver and bronze coins thrown in. Hagrid and Radgog came in behind him.

"So why are there two piles?" Harry asked,

"well," said Radgog, "the smaller pile is yours to spend as you choose, the larger is set aside for your Hogwarts tuition, it is your money and you may of course spend it if you choose but that is the exact amount needed for the next six years, the first years fees have already been deducted."

"and the coins themselves?" Harry asked

"The small bronze ones are called knuts" said the goblin "the silver, sickles, the large gold ones, galleons there's 29 knuts to a sickle and 17 sickles to a galleon."

"And a galleon is worth what in British pounds?"

"Well of course it fluctuates daily however based on today's market I would say a galleon would be approximately 150 British pounds. Whilst it might seem like a lot you will find basic expenses in the wizarding world are a little dearer than in the muggle." Harry had already figured this last part for himself.

Hagrid had said there wasn't much money left over and Harry vowed he would have to do something about the situation. He had gone through his life up to now as a pauper and he'd be damned if he continued on as one. Doing a quick calculation he determined that a knut was worth almost exactly 30p which made sense as the lowest useable amount of cash considering what the goblin had said about everyday expenses.

Grabbing a bag hanging on the wall harry threw some money into the bag and showed the goblin what he had taken with a questioning look.

"First year?" the goblin enquired, Harry nodded, "I'd suggest you take another five galleons there's a couple of expensive items you'll need to purchase." Harry nodded again counted out the requested coins and walked back outside to the cart. Ignoring Hagrid's plea to go slower the goblin treated them to another hair raising ride which harry enjoyed immensely.

Blinking his eyes a little as he walked back into the sun, Harry looked to Hagrid. "so where to now?" he asked.

"Well" said Hagrid, "since we're at this en' o' the alley I thought I might just pop down Knockturn alley to grab a couple of supplies."

"Great" said Harry "which way is that?"

"Ahh ya see I thought you could go 'n' get your robes or something while I go down there, not really the sorta place for a kid ya see."

"Aww come on, who's going to try anything while you're there, let's go" Harry started walking over to the other side of Gringott's which is the direction he had caught Hagrid nodding in whilst questioning him. Helplessly Hagrid followed.

Hagrid was right; Knockturn Alley was no place for a kid, well a normal kid. It was a bit dark and shifty and Harry got the feeling that a fair bit of the stuff that got sold down here wasn't exactly legal, or if it was it wouldn't be for long.

There was a woman who approached him with a tray of what looked like human fingernails and there was a shop window with what looked to harry like shrunken heads. A little ways down Harry saw a sign proclaiming "Borgin and Burkes – Pawnbrokers" where a blonde boy around his age and someone, judging from the colour of his hair could only be his father, were entering. There were peddlers offering amulets and a dingy little wooden shop proclaiming itself to be an elf dealership.

After the initial shock had worn off Harry found he enjoyed this place as much as Diagon Alley, if not more. Whilst it was probably best to be on your guard there didn't seem to be anyone down here who actually meant any harm but it had that nice air of danger. Kind of like the magical ghettos Harry thought.

Hagrid led harry down a side street and into a shop called Magical pest control. Once inside he wandered down the aisles a bit before heading up to the counter with a large bottle of 'flesh eating slug repellant,'

"school cabbages?" Said the store keep to Hagrid,

"yeah ifn ya could just charge it to the accoun' John,"

"no problems have a nice day,"

"you too,"

Leading Harry back through the Diagon Alley Hagrid sent him a shifty look, "listen 'arry, I'd appreciate it if ya didn't mention I took ya down there to anyone a' 'ogwarts."

"Sure."

"Thanks, listen, I'm still feeling that cart ride from Gringotts, there's the robe shop over there would ya mind if I went and had meself a pick me up at the leaky cauldron?"

"No problem," said Harry looking forward to the chance to head off and explore a bit without any supervision. "Tell you what it's about eleven o'clock now why don't you have a relax for a couple of hours and I'll meet you back in front of Gringott's at about one."

"Thad'd be grea' thanks 'arry," departing from Hagrid, Harry made his way to Madame Malkin's robe shop. Pushing the door open he found a small but neat tailors with fabric along the walls and two stools in the middle of the floor. On one was the blonde boy Harry had seen earlier at the pawn shop who was getting fitted for robes by a young witch in her early twenties.

Harry walked more into the shop feeling not for the first time today a bit conspicuous in his "muggle" attire. Whilst stepping onto the stool, at a gesture from the witch, the boy spoke,

"hullo, Hogwarts?"

"yeah, you too I assume,"

"uh huh, done all your shopping yet? My mother's next door looking at books and my father's down the street, hopefully buying me a broomstick as an late birthday present."

"Barely started," Harry said, this boy seemed alright, bit spoilt perhaps but alright, considering Harry had spent a bit of time staring at the broomstick shop on his way here himself, after all what 11 year old boy wouldn't want a flying broomstick.

Whilst this conversation was happening an elderly woman came out and started draping fabric over Harry,

"so when was your birthday?"

"fifth of June" said the boy morosely, he'd obviously been waiting a while for this present. "how about yours."

"Err now that you mention it, today."

"Oh wow, happy birthday. Hey wait a second, wow you share a birthday with Harry Potter!" Harry grinned,

"Funny about that," he extended his hand "Harry Potter, pleased to meet you." The boy looked like a goldfish for about 3 seconds and Harry saw his eyes rake his forehead before snapping his mouth shut and grabbing Harry's hand.

"Draco Malfoy, likewise. Do you play quidditch?"

"No, what's that? Sorry I grew up with muggles, I don't really know much about the wizarding world"

"oh I'm really sorry to hear that, you'll love quidditch, it's our sport, played on broomsticks, it's so much fun!"

"Yeah I bet, so tell me what type of broom do you want, I don't know much but I had a bit of a perve in the store? That Nimbus 2001 looks amazing!"

Draco gave a laugh, "yeah of course it does, it's a professional quidditch broom, the English national team used them for the world cup last summer, I'm after a Cleansweep 8 though." Harry was a bit surprised at this

"Correct me if I'm wrong here, but you seem like the type not to settle for second best, why not go the Nimbus?"

"Well as I said the Nimbus is a professional broom they go heaps faster and are sooo much better," Draco paused for a second with a dreamy look on his face before continuing, "but they take their power directly from the rider, which is fine if you're a fully matured wizard who's trained on them but they would wear you or I out in less than 10 minutes. The Cleansweep on the other hand is a amateur broom which uses a small part of the riders power to draw magic from the ether, so while a Nimbus would be amazing, it's just not possible for a while."

"What's the eth…"

"That's you done dear" said the elderly tailor to harry, who was obviously a lot faster than the other woman.

"Oh ok. See you at Hogwarts I guess" Harry said as he walked out the door with his new robes.

"Yeah will do."

The fitting hadn't taken 15 minutes and Harry wandered around the various shops picking up odds and ends on his supply list such as a cauldron, dragon hide glove, a telescope, and his supplies from the apothecary, which were quite expensive, he assumed that the school supplied the more common ingredients but students were required to buy the more expensive ones.

After a bit of time spent juggling a couple of brown paper bags he wandered past a trunk store double taking, he walked in. After almost walking strait back out in disgust at the prices, his attention was caught by a nice simple trunk which had a slight expanding charm on the inside which made the inside about a half bigger than the outside. It was moderately priced but the store keeper assured him that all trunks came with what he called a Hogwarts warranty which basically covered the trunks on the full return no questions asked policy for seven years.

Happy with his purchase and no longer looking like a professional clown in a circus, Harry made his way to the book store. To be greeted by a line which extended about twenty yards down the street. A large banner proclaimed that Gilderoy Lockhart would be signing copies of his autobiography 'Magical Me.'

The name triggered something in Harry's memory and he flipped open his book list and noticed that more than half the books he was required to get were written by this man. Quite excited Harry made his way into the shop, the line was only leading to the table where a handsome blonde man was signing books, people were still free to come and purchase, he started picking out the books that he'd need.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a pretty redheaded girl about his age browsing in another section wandering over he saw that it was a second hand section, ecstatic to save a bit of cash, since the books he'd been picking out were by no means cheap, Harry dumped his lot on a shelf and headed over and started to pick out books again. Figuring it had worked for Draco on him, he used the ridiculously obvious conversation starter.

"Hogwarts?"

"Yeah" the girl looked up at him, he caught a flash of surprise in her eyes and a brief probe of her thoughts gave him the information that she found him attractive. Flashing a grin at her he said,

"so you here on your own?"

"No my family's trying to pick up their own books, there's not many second hand copies of the Lockhart ones to go round. They're all the redheaded ones," she said with a laugh

"Agreed, I'm sure I can find the other texts but for those I'm almost resigning myself to getting the new ones."

"Yeah, they're so expensive though…"

"Oh here we go," said Harry pulling aside a copy of 'The Arte of Disfigurement, what to do if you _are_ too sexy for your skin" and removing from behind it two copies of Wanderings with Werewolves, flipping through the pages to make sure they were intact Harry gave a little gasp,

"wow, these are first edition. Here you go" he said handing one to the girl

"Thanks…"

"Oh right, how rude of me, Harry Potter pleased to meet you," it was now the girls turn to give a little gasp. Her eyes flicked up his forehead where his fringe was covering his lightning bolt shaped scar, he figured that his scar must be public knowledge from the event since he had seen Draco do this as well.

"Ginny Weasly" the girl replied taking the hand harry had held out.

"Oh look," Harry said, "Holidays with Hags… urgh there's only one copy," deciding to do the chivalrous thing he handed the book to the girl. "Here you go, I'll grab a new one."

"Thanks," grabbing the book from the pile where he had left it the two made their way up to the counter which was next to where the man was signing. Just as he was about to pay, he spun around to say something to Ginny, his fringe must have flipped up and Lockhart must have caught sight of his scar, as he dropped the book he was signing and exclaimed

"Harry Potter, in my store," the person at the counter who Harry assumed was the owner gave him a filthy stare.

"Come here Harry he said together you and I are worth the front page," he grabbed Harry's hand and pulled him shoulder to shoulder with himself.

"Ladies and gentleman," Lockhart began, "I think this is the time to make an announcement that I've been sitting on for some time." A photographer who harry hadn't notices before was clicking away furiously, ah well, he thought, if you're going to be a celebrity may as well start with a bang.

"When Harry Potter walked into the store today he thought he'd be leaving with a signed copy of my autobiography "Magical Me" which he will of course be receiving, as well as all my other books," he paused for effect, "free of charge of course!"

the crowd clapped appreciatively, whilst the owner gave him an even filthier look. "But what young Harry Potter didn't realize was that he, and his schoolmates of course, would be receiving much more than my book, yes come September the first they well be receiving the real Magical Me as I take up my new post as the defense against the dark arts professor at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

The crowd roared with enthusiasm, Lockhart began signing the new books for Harry, just as he was about to throw out the second hand copy of 'Wanderings with Werewolves' Harry stopped him,

"Actually I'd rather keep that one thanks" Lockhart thumbed through the pages, and flashed Harry an extremely white grin,

"ahh, first edition, you have taste young man" finishing the signing Harry came down an placed the books in his trunk which Ginny had been diligently minding for him.

"Famous harry potter," drawled a familiar voice, "can't even walk into a bookshop without getting his photo taken" Harry look at the teasing face of Draco Malfoy, he was about to reply when Ginny interrupted,

"he didn't want all that, you're just jealous!"

"Woah woah, ease up there sweetie" Harry laughed,

"Potter you got yourself a girlfriend" Draco said with an air of one who just got the best birthday present of his life, Ginny squeaked something about meeting up with her family and ran off,

"I'll see you on the train," Harry called after her, then turning his attention to Draco, "ha ha ha," he said with enough sarcasm to sink the titanic, "your hilarious, did you get your broomstick?"

"Yup!" said Draco with a huge grin "sure did, anyway you done yet?"

"Just my wand to go I couldn't find the shop and I'm meant to be meeting my guide in ten minutes in front of Gringott's so I'll probably head there." Just then the tall man who Harry had earlier presumed to be Draco's father came up,

"Draco, let's be goi… who do we have here?"

"Harry Potter sir, pleased to meet you." Harry said extending his hand again,

"Lucius Malfoy, likewise I'm sure," he gave Harry a strong handshake. "Unfortunately I must be going. Come on Draco, we'll be late for lunch with your mother."

Lucius and Draco turned to leave nearly bumping into a extremely redheaded man who, judging by her description of him could only be Ginnys father.

"Lucius Malfoy" he sneered, "I'm surprised to see you this end of town, I thought you did all your shopping 'elsewhere.'"

"Arthur Weasely, I'm surprised to see you in a shop at all, Ministry given you a raise have they?" Lucius replied with contempt, he reached over and plucked a book from Ginny's hands and said with a grin,

"ahh apparently not." Harry saw Arthur reaching into his pocket and not wanting to be caught in a brawl in a crowded shop between two fully trained wizards he decided to diffuse the situation.

Stepping up to Arthur and grabbing his hand, making sure to lightly bump Lucius on the way through, he said, "Mister Weasley, Harry Potter pleasure to meet you."

"Oh of course," Arthur said slightly confused, but also a little starstruck, Harry noticed "how do you know me?"

"I was speaking to your daughter Ginny, we were picking out our books together, she mentioned you. See you Draco,"

During Harry and Arthurs chat, as he intended, Draco and Lucius had left the shop, having to weave through all the Weasley children who had appeared behind Arthurs shoulder as they did so. "And on that note," Harry said, " I must be going as well, bye Ginny, goodbye Mr Weasely"

Harry wandered back over to Gringott's pulling his trunk behind him, he could easily see Hagrid standing three feet above the crowd and he made his way over to him.

"'allo 'arry, didja get all your stuff?"

"Almost, I couldn't find the wand shop but aside from that I've got everything."

"didja buy yourself a pet?"

"No…"

"Well 'ats probably a good ting" Hagrid said with a grin pulling out from behind his back a cage with a beautiful snowy owl, "happy birthday Harry."

Harry was amazed, it was the first birthday present he'd received in his life it was so much more than the cake he'd received earlier. He stammered out another thanks and spent the next five minutes solidly staring at the beautiful owl in the cage.

With a grin after a bit Hagrid said "So 'arry you wanna go get your wand?"

Shaking his head for a second to clear it harry looked at Hagrid and nodded, Hagrid led him down a part of the alley that Harry hadn't ventured to before, hence the reason that he hadn't found the shop, into a dusty building with a fading sign overhead proclaiming 'Olivander's – makers of fine wands since 382 BC' shaking his head at the date, it must be either a typo or… He shook his head again.

Inside the shop it was dusty and had the scent of sawdust through the air. Magic hummed through the shop Harry could actually feel it, not to mention see it. The little eddies of white hummed through the shelves which contained hundreds, perhaps thousands of long thin rectangular boxes weaving in and out in a beautiful dance. Harry was enthralled, staring captivated at the silent symphony.

Hagrid however couldn't seem to care less, he walked over the spindely wooden chair and despite its creaking protests against his bulk took a seat. Or perhaps Harry thought as he watched Hagrid's disinterested eyes move around aimlessly; he can't see it, perhaps even in this world there's something a bit special about me.

Harry's grandeur like thoughts were cut short by a extremely old man appearing from somewhere behind the back of the shop. "I thought I might be seeing you here today Mr. Potter, my name is Mr. Olivander" he said in a slow slightly creepy voice, "ahh it seems like only yesterday that your mother and father were in here purchasing their wands, and Rubeus Hagrid," he thought for a moment. "Oak 16 inches rather bendy wasn't it?"

"Ah that it were sir."

"But I suppose they snapped it when you were expelled, shame good wand that…"

"I've still got the pieces" said Hagrid brightly

"But you don't use them?" harry had a chuckle to himself at Hagrid's indiscretion which apparently Olivander heard as his attention switched to him, "so Mr. Potter, let's get you fitted,"

he clicked his fingers and a tape measure came out from behind the desk and started measuring Harry's legs all by itself. "Could you hold out your dominant wand hand please."

Harry, assuming this would be the same as the hand he wrote with held out his right hand and the tape measure jumped up into his arm pit and started measuring from there. Trying to ignore it Harry asked "so what do you actually need a wand for?"

"Why 'arry ya need a wand to do magic!" Hagrid decided to interject. Olivander gave him a greasy stare and said,

"you are no doubt referring, Mr. Potter, to some of the accidental magic that you may have performed as a child, turning someone who annoyed you hair blue, falling from a height without injury or perhaps receiving an injury and waking up in the morning with it completely healed? Why you may ask don't we train that particular ability?"

Harry thinking about the spells he could weave without tools of any kind, schooled his expression and said "yeah something like that."

"Well you see Mr. Potter all magic is woven, it can be made to do simple things like picking up a book or extremely complicated things like making an inanimate object, such as a , tap dance. Now the first spell can indeed be woven manually by a wizard or witch who is has excellent control of their magic however the latter is so complicated it would take an extremely intelligent person to be able to maintain the concentration to perform the spell whilst keeping the weave. This leads us to spell crafters,"

Whilst Ollivander was talking he was wandering down shelves picking up armfuls of boxes and bringing them over to where Harry was standing, "this leads us to spells, in fifth year you will have the chance to study arithmancy which is the beginnings of spell crafting, spells are woven by doing the workings and maths on paper and then using a complicated process, which I won't go into now, they are fed into the ether. Depending on the type of magic these spells will be matched with appropriate phraseology and wand movements and then by replicating these movements and words any magic user can replicate the intended spell.

A further benefit of a wand is that it allows more powerful spell crafting as it only uses a small portion of the uses power whilst drawing the rest from the ether along with the weaving of the spell."

"Oh like an amateur broomstick," harry said finally starting to see a pattern to all this.

"Exactly," said Olivander obviously pleased that Harry was following his little lecture, Hagrid by contrast was almost drooling from information overload. "that will be enough" he said suddenly and the tape measure, that Harry had completely forgotten about and was currently trying to push its way down his pants, dropped to the floor.

"What was that for?" Harry asked indicating the tape measure

"Magic in a person is made up of three properties, spiritual, intellectual and physical, and the wand core must match that, whilst the first two are hard to measure, the third is easy so it's a good idea to take some measurements to get a rough guide to what you'll be matched with before we start shoving wands in your hand."

Which is exactly what he started doing next shoving wand after wand into Harry's hand from the pile that had been built up beside him. Sometimes he would let him give it a good wave, and other times he would barely touch his finger to it before it was snatched away and replaced with a new one.

Each time a wand was placed in his hand it was he was told four properties about it by Olivander; it's timber, its core, its length and its physical properties .

"Willow, hippogriff feather, 12 inches, rather sturdy."

Whilst Harry had no idea how olivander could tell that the wands weren't suitable, it could certainly see it for himself, after spending the whole day round magic and especially after his little lesson in weaving, he was beginning to see patterns in the magic, he could tell that although not perfect the Hippogriff feather was a close match to his own magic but the willow was a ways off.

"So," said Harry feeling slightly awkward at the extremely long period of silence punctuated only by the names of various timbers, magical animals (some of which harry had never heard of, what the hell was a nundu),

"what's the point of the wood and the core and for that matter how do you get it in there, its it just magicked in?"

"Well, the core is part of an animal which will blend well with your own magic, that is to say something which has similar characteristics as yourself. As it is this part of the wand that draws the magic from you.

The wood is representative of how you see your environment or the world around you, the willow you hold in your hands would suit a very laid back perhaps slightly lazy person, branches drooping in a river bend on a summers day, I probably don't need to tell you it is nowhere near a match with you.

As for how they are made, would you like to see?"

Harry would have loved to have said yes but a glance at Hagrid showed him the enormous man seemed to be getting a little impatient, just as he was about to utter a regretful no he found himself being led into the rear of the shop by the elderly gentleman.

The two walked through a small door into a workshop about the size of the shed at his aunt and uncles place. There was a lathe and turning tools all arranged neatly on the walls, wood shavings littered the floor and sawdust glistened in the air lit up by the sunlight streaming through the open window. There was a smell of freshly cut pine and as far as Harry was concerned this was heaven.

Olivander watched him breath it all in,

"you see Harry wands are inherently magical and it is impossible to make something magical by magic if that makes sense." Harry still enthralled by the workshop just nodded.

"All the properties of wands are made of magical parts and whilst it's certainly possible to alter magical things with magic it is very difficult as they resist change and it also degrades their properties significantly. So the wands are made here in this workshop. Depending on the wood they are cut, by a saw, hand chiseled with the grain or turned on the lathe, for example citrus, a wonderful timber for somebody always willing to please, is a terrible wood to turn on the lathe so it is chiseled. After that a minute hole is then bored for the core, which is slipped in and the wand is sanded to its final shape and finished with this."

He pulled out a can from under the bench, "but," said Harry looking at it, that's Estapol we've got some of that at home in the shed."

"Exactly, it is a muggle substance, marine varnish I think they call it, excellent hardening properties, weather resistant and gives a lovely finish. Why use something magical when something mundane will do the job perfectly hmm?"

"Now, said Olivander suddenly more business like, "tell me in a single statement how would you describe yourself?"

Put on the spot a bit with that question he thought a bit before answering,

"I guess," he said remembering all those times when he would get beaten up only to be on his feet seconds later and those times when he thought he was going to die from lack of breath but kept running, "I never give up."

"Hmmm, unrelenting, I knew we were close with that hippogriff feather, but proudness wasn't quite it." I think I might have just the thing Mr. Potter. Now tell me what do you think of the magical world as you've seen it thus far?"

"It's fantastic, I can't wait to get started," he said with a big grin.

"Any worries about any of the subjects? I know you haven't started yet but anything you think might be difficult?"

A little confused by this line of questioning harry replied "no… well I'm sure there must be difficult subjects but I'm certainly not worried about anything."

"Very well then Mr. Potter then I think I have just the wand for you."

Ollivander lead Harry back into the main shop where Hagrid was sitting reading the pamphlet that came with his slug repellant, on his way picking, seemingly to Harry, a random box off the shelf.

"Here you are Mr. Potter he said handing him the box; Red Gum (an import from Australia) with an Egyptian Fire Ant core, 13 inches extremely flexible"

Harry opened the box with reverence and inside found the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, the varnish bought up the highlights of the dark red timber wonderfully the whole way along the slender wand. Placing his hand in the box he let a bit of his own magic come out his hand and he could see it would mingle perfectly with the wispy hues of the wand.

As he picked it up and held it aloft he got a feeling in the pit of his stomach that his world was never going to be the same again.

"arrgh" said Hagrid suddenly, "tha' ones no good either." Harry and Olivander looked at him.

"Why would you say that?" asked Harry.

"Well there's no sparks are there 'arry?"

"Mr Hagrid, surely you should know after over half a century in the magical world that subtleness and grace not large bangs and pops are the mark of a fine wizard." Olivander rebuked sharply "I think we can expect great things from you Mr. Potter. Would you like any accessories to go with your wand?"

"ahh something to polish it perhaps? And perhaps you can tell me where are you meant to keep it?"

"in ya pocke' o' course 'arry" Completely ignoring Hagrid this time Olivander said,

"Here's a polishing kit, and a wrist holster, it takes a bit of practice to get the movement right but once you do it's completely worth it, so that will be," he began pushing buttons on an ancient looking cash register, "twenty eight for the polishing kit, one and fourteen for the holster and of course seven galleons for the wand." Harry nearly fainted.

"Seven galleons?" he gasped, all his other purchases together had barely struck three. "That's over a thousand pounds!" Olivander gave him a look, "your right I guess, it is worth it," begrudgingly he handed over 8 galleons and held out his hand for the change.

"have a nice day Mr. Potter"

"yeah you to."

hphphphphphphphphphphphphphph

The ride back home was uneventful, upon reaching the Surrey train station Hagrid said, "well 'arry I guess I'll be seein' ya a' 'ogwarts. If them Dursleys give you any trouble send me a letter wit' ya owl, she'll know where to fin' me," and with that Hagrid vanished on the spot right in front of Harry's eyes.

"Wow," he said to himself as he began the short walk back to the house, "that's a trick I've got to learn!"


	7. Chapter 6 Chuga, Chuga Whooh Whooh

Hello everyone it's certainly been a while, nearly a year since I last updated :O, I would like to offer my most sincere apologies but unfortunately I was extremely busy with university etc. and did not really have the time.

I would also like to say thank you very much to everyone who reviewed the last chapter you wouldn't believe how amazing it is to read what people think of your fic, whether positive or negative as long as it's constructive I really don't mind, so please please please keep the reviews coming! They are certainly an inspiration to update.

Unfortunately it's getting to the point where it's hard to respond to all of the review at the start of the next chapter, so if there's a question that you'd really really like answered please just add a "please respond" at the end of the review and IF I can answer it without giving away the plot, I may send you a pm. This being said I will certainly be reading all the reviews and as I mentioned before they are a fantastic inspiration!

I would also like to offer another little apology, despite the time it took me to update this chapter unfortunately it is a bit of a filler, I swear that from here the plot will really start to liven up.

All that out the way I would like to say – Much love and please ENJOY!

Chapter 6

The next couple of weeks were reasonably uneventful. Harry had been expecting problems with his relatives due to his leaving and had returned to the house "combat ready." He had been expecting his uncle to be on his case about not being able to go, due to him having to continue his chores.

But as he soon figured Vernon was stupider than Harry gave him credit for, which was certainly saying something, as Vernon seemed to honestly believe that he would be better off without him. Realizing of course that this would be a once off thing only and he would have to prepare for next year, when the situation certainly wouldn't be the same, Harry chose to enjoy the opportunity.

His aunt and uncle did get him working a bit more than usual however Harry who had begun to enjoy the odd jobs and most of the chores relished the chance to be out of the house and doing something practical.

He had also begun reading his textbooks religiously eager to find out as much as possible out magic and the magical world and it honestly fascinated him.

He had begun trying some of the simpler spells and was ecstatic with how easily they came to him. His "normal" magic would take quite a lot of concentration, it became less as he did the same "spell" more he assumed this was similar to muscle memory, and he could literally feel the power draining out of him and would fell weak until he drew it back in after it was finished doing whatever he wanted it to.

However these new wanded spells were amazing. He only need a basic understanding of what the spell did, and provided he got the wand movement and the vocabulary perfect the spell would work. In fact in _The Standard Book of Spells Grade 1;_ there was an appendix at the back which listed all the spells that would be taught over the course of the year and Harry tried covering up the description of the spell with his hand and trying to do them "blind," even then they had all worked.

He had also done some reading on history, which he had found interesting and in the book had come across the perfect name for his pet owl, Hedwig. Despite his initial hesitation at being given a birthday present Hedwig had become a fantastic companion to him and they go along really well.

The seven books that he had had to buy, or had actually been given by Gilderoy Lockhart were absolutely brilliant, they were more novels than textbooks filled with wit and humor however each time a spell or defensive measure was mentioned, there were detailed instructions and diagrams detailing exactly how to perform it and a list of potential scenarios where they could be used. Lockhart evidently had quite a vivid imagination.

His potions books were a bit trickier to begin with, the amount of ingredients and procedures involved was huge and it didn't help that a lot of the plant and animal matter was obviously magical in origin. This had left Harry scratching his head at what it actually was, there were of course pictures, and he had his own potions kit which he had purchased for reference, however looking at a jar of salamander livers gave him no clue as to what they actually were.

Deciding to give up on trying to memorize the ingredient list by heart. He had instead gone to the first year recipe book and started looking up some of the potions they would be making this year. This is where he got his break. He began noticing trends of what some of the ingredients did that didn't seem to be mentioned in the other book and by cross referencing one to the other he found he was getting a decent understanding of what was going on.

One thing that was puzzling him was the ticket that he found with his book list, it mentioned that the train left at exactly 10am on the first of September from platform 9 and ¾, having done quite a bit of traveling on public transport in his limited years, he knew for a fact that platforms weren't numbered fractionally and Hagrid had given him no information on the subject. Deciding that the best thing to do would be to ask he penned a small missive to Professor Mcgonagall, who had sent him the initial letter, enquiring about the location of the platform. He had then given the note to Hedwig who had been extremely happy to have some work to do and had taken off north immediately.

Harry had only had to wait a couple of hours for a reply from the deputy head, she had apologized profusely for Hagrid's forgetfulness and had informed him that the platform was hidden in between the barriers of platforms 9 and 10.

After asking Hedwig if she'd like another trip and receiving a enthusiastic hoot in response he had written a quick thank you note mentioning not to blame Hagrid as there was a lot of information to convey in a short space of time. After all despite being hopeless he enjoyed the large man's company.

Harry had spent a lot of his free time when he wasn't reading, doing chores or practicing magic, at his friend Charles place.

They wouldn't do much just throw a ball around, watch TV, head down the park with a couple of other blokes and sometimes some girls and chat. Harry was really starting to get to a point where he was certainly noticing girls and certainly enjoyed their occasional company.

Occasionally if Charles's parents weren't home they would get stuck into the liquor cabinet. Harry had mentioned that he had gotten a scholarship at a school in Scotland. Charles had taken it pretty well, both boys being only eleven figured that they would still see each other over the holidays and they'd make plenty of new friends at their respective new schools.

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The thirty first of October had finally arrived and harry was beyond excited, he couldn't wait for the next morning and had desperately kept himself busy with chores all day to take his mind off it, he felt that he had studied enough to make an impact at school despite being pretty naïve regarding the customs of the wizarding world.

He could do the majority of the spells in the textbooks and was pretty confident with his knowledge regarding the other subjects, well at least the ones he had books for, he did expect that there would be others but he figured that he would be in the same boat as everyone else.

That night after cooking up a scrumptious meal for his relatives and a healthy, wholesome yet boring meal for himself he went into the living room and cleared his throat.

"Umm, Uncle Vernon," he asked stumbling slightly over the polite tone he was using,

Vernon grunted to acknowledge his presence,

"I have to be at Kings cross station tomorrow morning by ten am do you think that you could give me a lift?"

"To London?" he asked with a look of incredulity on his face "Fuck off." He then turned back to his newspaper. Harry sighed, whilst it was annoying it was hardly unexpected.

"Well in that case I'll have to catch the train, so I'll be off before you get up, I'll leave breakfast out…

…bye." This time no one actually acknowledged his presence.

Sighing again and trudging back to his cupboard Harry packed the few items that were out of his trunk back into it, he had been using it as a kind of pseudo wardrobe, since his 'bedroom' was severely lacking in space.

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The next day dawned bright and sun shining, harry rose early as was his custom and whipped up a quick breakfast for himself and the Durselys, then grabbing his trunk he wandered in the dawn light down to the local train station. It was a fair trip on the train to London but there were few people due to the early hour. Most were businessmen in suits, who all seemed to give him funny looks with his enormous trunk and snowy white owl perched contentedly in her cage, however nobody spoke to him.

Arriving at Kings cross on platform 4 he hauled his trunk and owl over to platform nine and stopped realizing that he had hardly needed to owl the professor about the location. The barrier between platform nine and ten was brightly woven with magic.

He wasn't sure if it was because he already knew what it did, or if after practicing so many spells he was getting the feel for the shapes of the weaves but he felt that the shape was insinuating that the wall wasn't solid, or it was but it also served as a portal to another place, he also realized that it was only eight thirty and the train didn't leave for another hour and a half. Figuring that he may as well hang around outside the platform and get a feel for the kind of people he'd be hanging round with, he took a seat and pulled one of the Lockhart books out of his trunk and started reading a couple of the more amusing paragraphs.

People start slowly milling around the station, and he began to notice the magicals, they were quite easy to recognize if you were looking for them, they nearly all had old fashioned trunks and would come and stand near the barrier on platform nine, look around surreptitiously then when there was a big group masking their movement, they would hurry towards the barrier and disappear.

Harry spent a fair amount of time letting himself be amused by their antics and by the book he was reading, before deciding that with 10 minutes until the train left it was probably time that he made waves, so to speak.

Just has he was about to get up and head through to the platform he noticed a familiar redheaded family make their way onto the platform. Amongst them looking rather frazzled yet at the same time oddly tantalizing was the girl he had been speaking to at the bookshop, Ginny, if his memory served, not one to look a gift horse in the mouth he picked up his trunk and cage, winking at Hedwig as he did so, then wandered over to the plump lady who he assumed to be her mother, since she was the only one he hadn't met before.

"Excuse me ma'am" he asked, she whirled around eyes wild before they rested on the owl and his trunk and she calmed completely. Realizing that she was only afraid of being caught by a muggle, Harry let her shock at his presence wash over him.

"Yes dear?"

"Sorry it's my first time and I don't…" at this point he deliberately noticed the others and caught Ginny's eye, "oh hello, I thought that I might be seeing you today." He flashed her a smile, then turned his attention back to her mother. "Sorry, I'm not sure how to get on the station."

"Oh, first year are you, Ginny's starting this year as well and Ron, Fred, George and Percy are all in the upper years," she said indicating the four redheaded boys milling around, "Percy's a prefect this year!"

"Really? Are you Percy, a prefect you should have said something!" one of the boys, said with the most serious face harry had ever seen,

"Yeah, I mean you'd think it's something, someone would mention at least once." He continued. Harry did a double take, he hadn't been continuing it was his brother, his identical twin brother who was exactly the same right down to his abundant freckles.

"Oh shut up," said the boy Harry assumed to be Percy before picking up his trunk and owl and lugging it over to the barrier and walking through it.

"I'm Molly Weasely by the way dear." The woman said whilst shaking her head presumably at her son's antics. "Well I'm sure you figured out, you just walk through the barrier why don't you go now with Ginny."

"Alright," he said flashing another smile at the girl now standing next to him, "thank you for your help Mrs. Weasley"

"Whats your name by the way dear?"

"Harry," he said over his shoulder as he walked towards the barrier, "Harry Potter." As he felt the wall envelop him he saw the shocked expressions of the three remaining boys and extremely disgruntled one on the youngest, Ron if he was correct, taking a quick peek inside the boys memories as he made eye contact with him he saw that the boy had known that he was coming to school this year and was hoping to befriend him himself.

Shaking his head at the gangly youth he instead turned his attention to his attractive sister who was now looking at him expectantly.

"Let's find a compartment shall we?" he asked.

She nodded her affirmation and started walking next to him, noticing that she was having some trouble carrying her trunk (Harry after noticing how difficult it had been getting home the first time he had used a traveling suitcase of Vernon's and added wheels to his) he, without bothering to ask picked it up and continued walking along the platform, smirking to himself at the admiring look she gave him.

Easily lifting the two cases onto the back carriage of the bright red steam engine he opened up the first compartment. Found it to his liking swung the two trunks expertly onto the luggage rack and sat down before looking expectantly at Ginny.

After looking at her for a couple of seconds as she stood gawking in the doorway he indicated the seat across from him with a small nod of his head and said "please, take a seat," she did.

After a few more moments of awkward silence, well awkward for Ginny, Harry found it hilarious he finally said "so how was the rest of your summer?"

"Good."

"Did you get up to much?"

"No not really, my brothers and I mucked around together a fair bit and I hung out at my friend Luna's house." Harry was a bit put out by the lack of a responding question despite a look into her thoughts telling him that it wasn't that she was deliberately being rude but more that she was still a little star struck at actually being in a compartment with Harry Potter. Not minding people idolizing him but being a little put out by the girls lack of input he none the less kept trying to get blood from the proverbial stone.

"So it must be interesting having so many older brothers."

"Yeah kind of…" they sat in a few more moments of awkward silence before it was interrupted by a knock at the door.

"Thank god," harry whispered under his breath

"What?"

"Nothing" he replied jumping up to open the door to find a matronly lady pushing around a trolley of food, pretty hungry by this stage and kicking himself a little that he didn't pack lunch and would have to buy it he ordered a couple of pumpkin pasty's for himself and then feeling a little chivalrous grabbed one for Ginny as well figuring, that if she didn't eat it, he wouldn't turn his nose up at a third. After paying whilst forcing himself not to convert the sum to pounds and pence lest he keel over and die, he wandered over and sat down again.

Ginny seemed to be looking for something in her trunk, Harry, figuring he could more than keep himself amused took a huge bite out of the pasty. It was fantastic, a lovely mix of pumpkin and cheese with a buttery pastry to die for. Noticing Ginny turn around he offered one out to her, "pasty"

"Oh no I couldn't take your food, you have it,"

'It's fine, I figured I'd get you one, their delicious!"

"Are they sweet?"

"God no," Harry shuddered, "it was the only thing on the cart that wasn't," you didn't need to be a mind reader to notice the little shiver that Ginny gave at that news,

"No I'll be fine thanks" Harry shrugged to himself, ah well each to their own,

Harry continued to munch on his pasties whilst casting the odd surreptitious glance at the girl across from him, Ginny by contrast was staring fixatedly at him, "looking forward to school?" Harry asked

"Yeah I guess."

"I guess you must know a fair bit already having come from an all magical family?"

"Not really." Harry was waiting for her to elaborate on this, which she seemed to have no interest in doing, simply staring back at him, when he was saved by another knock at the door. Sighing in relief he got up opened it and was greeted by an extremely cute girl with dirty blonde hair and what could only be radishes dangling from her earlobes.

"Hello," she greeted him, "you must be Harry Potter, pleased to meet you," then without waiting for a response she sidestepped him and sat next to the Ginny, "Hello Ginerva, you look like you've got a bit of a Wrackspurt infestation there"

Ginny who had still been staring at the wall where Harry's head used to be, shook her own head to clear it. "Oh hi Luna, how are you?"

"Yes Hi Luna," Harry, who had just retaken his seat, interrupted, "I don't believe we've been introduced," and he held out his hand.

"Oh how rude of me, Luna Lovegood," she said taking the proffered hand and planting a kiss on the back of it. A little bit shocked Harry asked;

"And what exactly is a Wrackspurt?"

"It's a little creature that flies into your ears and makes your brain go fuzzy"

"Oh," said Harry catching onto the gag and looking over at Ginny with a mischievous expression "Is that what I felt buzzing around in here earlier?"

Luna caught his eye and grinned, "probably"

"Soo… he asked do you like cheese?"

"Ye.. wait what?"

"Do - you - like - cheese?" Harry repeated slowly with a grin,

"Yeah, I guess"

"What sort of cheese?"

"Umm, I don't know gouda's nice"

This inane line of questioning continued back and forth for a good three minutes or so, Luna giving as good as she got and thoroughly impressing Harry with her easy going nature.

Whilst trying to convince her that a herring would be a far better fish to use to chop down a tree than an Atlantic salmon, he realized that Ginny had left. Pausing briefly he asked Luna if she saw her go. Receiving a negative response he shrugged his shoulders and continued.

The two eleven year olds continued along with this vein of budding friendship over the next few hours as the train pulled further and further north. The countryside became hillier and more sparsely populated, although Harry did wonder at how the muggles who lived along the train line didn't question where the train came went to and from.

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After quite a few hours which honestly hadn't seemed that long, an announcement came over the train (despite the distinct lack of speakers) indicating that they would soon be arriving at Hogwarts and that if they hadn't done so already that they should get changed into their robes.

Harry was just about to get up to give Luna some privacy, when she, herself got up removed her top and pants and threw her robes on over her underwear. After a brief moment of hesitation and being quite shocked at seeing a girl in that state of undress, Harry gave his head a little shake and, never being one to get embarrassed, followed suit.

He wondered a little whether that this was a wizard thing, that it wasn't inappropriate for people of opposite genders to get undressed in front of each other or whether it was a quirk of Luna's, he hadn't read anything about it however, he assumed, if it were a "wizard thing" then no one who was a wizard would bother mentioning it in a book. Deciding not to ask (but at the same time bemoaning the lack of a book entitled "Lonely Planet: Wizarding Briton") he continued the conversation that they were having previously.

Around fifteen or twenty minutes later the train started slowing down before pulling into a station which, whilst it was hard to see in the dark, seemed to back onto a small town. A further announcement came over letting everyone know that there was no need to take their luggage as it would be brought up to the school separately.

Upon disembarking on the platform amongst the milling sea of pointed hats, Harry and Luna made their way over to a voice calling "firs' years, this way."

Thinking he recognized the voice, Harry was quickly proven correct when they found themselves with around twenty to thirty students standing in front of the enormous figure of Hagrid. Harry flashed him a wide smile and was happy to see it returned. Once the other students had departed Hagrid did a quick head count and started wandering off the station beckoning the first years to follow.

A quick two minute walk later through a small copse of trees found the group at a small dock with several small row boats sans the oars bobbing around in what seemed like an enormous lake. At this time of night the night sky was perfectly mirrored in the water which gave the whole scene an eerie yet beautiful quality. Harry could see that there were dim stings of magic which came from the bows of each of the little boats and stretched across the lake.

At Hagrid's instruction Harry and Luna found themselves in a boat with a skinny boy with a camera around his neck, whom introduced himself as Colin Creevy, all the other boats had four people in them however there seemed to be an uneven number of students. Hagrid, who had a whole boat to himself, gave the stern of his a sharp rap with his pink umbrella, all the strings connecting the boats suddenly lit up brighter than before and the whole fleet began floating gently across the water.

"Righ' 'roun' this bend" said Hagrid whose voice was more subdued and reverent than normal "you'll catch yer firs' glimpse of 'ogwarts" and they did, out on the other side of the lake perched above what looked in the dark like a sweeping field stood the proudest castle imaginable, parapets dotted the roof and towers stretched impossibly high to the heavens.

Yet unlike the pictures of castles harry had seen from this emanated a beautiful warm glow not only from the windows but the stone itself shimmered with a wonderful twirling weave of pure magic. The other first years "oohed" and "ahhed" appreciatively and Harry didn't blame them but he, himself kept perfectly quiet. Basking in the magnificence of the building which was to be his home for the next seven years.

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He would be told later that the journey from when they saw Hogwarts to the end of the lake took quite a while but Harry would never believe it because, as far as he was concerned all too soon was Hagrid knocking at the huge wooden door and introducing them to the intimidating deputy headmistress with whom he had exchanged the letters.

"The first years, Professor Mcgonagall" Hagrid said formally,

"Thank you Hagrid, I'll take them from here"

With that Hagrid turned and went back to the boats and started taking them back across the lake whilst the professor ushered them inside. It struck Harry that the whole exchange had been rather unnecessary after all, who else would they be. However upon reflection he realized that with the effort Hagrid was putting into his pronunciation this was probably quite a long standing tradition. He was brought out of his musings by the professor speaking again.

"In a moment, I will take you to the great hall where you will be sorted into one of the four houses of Hogwarts. The sorting ceremony is both rich in tradition and extremely important because during your tenure at Hogwarts your house will become like your family. You will eat on your house tables, you will take classes with your housemates, you will spend your free time in your house common room and you will sleep in your house dormitories.

Now as I mentioned before there are four houses; Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and Gryffindor," here Harry noticed the slight distaste in her voice when she mentioned the third house and the pride from the fourth. "All four houses are named after the founders of the school and all have produced extremely talented witches and wizards, I am sure that whichever house you end up representing you will be a credit to the school."

"Now as the sorting ceremony takes place in the great hall before the entire school I suggest you take the time to tidy yourselves up a little."

Subtly extending a tendril of magic to her eyes Harry caught some amusing images of a redheaded boy with a smudge on his nose and another boy who had actually walked onstage with his robe fastened under his ear. He also caught the note of approval when the professor's eyes made contact with him.

After years with the Dursleys, Harry had long since realized the stock most people put in first impressions and one of the first charms that he had learnt from their first year textbook had been a personal grooming spell which made sure that everything that you were wearing (including your hairstyle apparently) was being worn in the correct manner.

After giving some of the scruffier students a moment or two to pat down their robes or hair, the group of Hogwarts first years found themselves being led through an yet another huge set of doors into the great hall.

Four long rectangular tables sat ,two on either side of the path they were taking, whilst numerous students sitting on them turned around to gawk. Up ahead was another elongated rectangular table which seated around twenty adults which Harry assumed must be the teachers.

Professor Mcgonagall led them up to just in front of the staff table where an ancient wizards hat was sitting upon a stool. Harry looked at it bemusedly for a moment before a tear just above the brim opened of its own accord and it started to sing.

_Oh we all have a job in this fair Hogwarts, true,  
>Students learn, Professors teach, whilst Peeves hurls lumps of poo.<br>But what is mine I hear you ask? Why, it's to sort new students now,  
>But if you listen carefully, first I'll tell you how.<em>

_Around the turn of the Millennia,  
>When I was black yet bright,<br>There were four mages of a kind,  
>Who thought they'd do what's right,<em>

_So they built a school, a castle tall  
>And gathered from all the land,<br>Those young mages whom could not yet crawl,  
>And taught them how to stand. <em>

_Through Fire, through ice, through rain, through snow,  
>They toiled with heart and hands,<br>Yet despite being just and chivalrous,  
>They all had firm Demands.<em>

_For the children they were teaching,  
>Were not equal in their eyes,<br>As though the students' thirst for learning,  
>Were not enough, a prize.<em>

_Said Gryffindor; "I'll take the Brave,  
>The strong, the bold of heart."<br>Said Ravenclaw; "I'll have those with wit,  
>Those with knowledge, who are smart."<em>

_Said Slythrin, "I'll take the cunning,  
>You see, they surely must be best,<br>Their ambition will assist them,  
>To keep their hearts within their chest."<em>

_Said Hufflepuff, "I'll take them all,  
>But let this now be known,<br>That loyalty and hard work,  
>Will help all seeds be sown. <em>

_And so divided thusly,  
>These new students stood.<br>Picked by those four masters,  
>As only then, they could.<em>

_What they wondered then,  
>Would happen to this plan,<br>When they were dead and gone,  
>and none stood where they stand, <em>

_Gryffindor took me off his head,  
>And then he bade me thus,<br>"With this magic that I give you,  
>May it help you think of us."<em>

"_Let the students place you upon their head,  
>And in their minds you'll see,<br>Their deepest wish, their urge, their drive,  
>And you can tell them where to be"<em>

_So that's my role, and my song,  
>about the mettle of this school,<br>So come and place me on your head,  
>And let me be your tool, <em>

_To guide you strait, where you belong,  
>So do not fear or dread,<br>For I'm the Hogwarts Sorting Hat,  
>And I BELONG upon your head.<br>_

The hall burst into applause at the hats song, Harry was quite impressed that a hat could sing, however he was slightly more preoccupied with the undercurrents from its song that the hat didn't actually seem to believe that it was doing the right thing.

Professor Mcgonagall who was standing behind the hat with a clipboard had started calling off names, as she did so the students would walk up to the stool place the hat on their head and it would call out the name of one of the four houses. Then the students and staff would all applaud.

"Chalayan, Beatrix"

After around six seconds "RAVENCLAW"

"Deanda, Jessica"

"HUFFLEPUFF"

Harry assumed that the longer the hat was on your head the more of the different personality traits you had, as there certainly seemed to be no rhyme or reason other than that to the timing. Sometimes the hat would call out strait away other times it would take nearly a minute.

"Lovegood, Luna"

Harry gave his blonde friend a smile and watched with interest as she walked calmly towards the stool. Then after about thirty seconds deliberation,

"RAVENCLAW"

"Potter, Harry"

The hall went quiet, Harry never one to let these sort of things get to him looked around impassively, catching the eyes of various students he let trails of magic bring him back tidbits of information. "Is it the Harry Potter?" "Can it really be him?" "Wow, he's pretty cute," Harry had to work hard to hide the smirk after that, it had come from a pretty girl who only looked a little older than him from the table with the green trim, Slytherin he thought from one where one of the early students had headed to.

He wandered over to the stool picked up the hat carefully, sat down and put it on and it slipped right down over his head to his nose. "Ah well," he thought, "so much for being suave." He heard a chuckle in his ear. Then;

"Well, well, well, what have we here, you are an interesting one aren't you? Hmmm"

"Errm," thought Harry a little disturbed at the voice talking in his head, "Thanks, I guess?"

"You have quite some talent here, oh my yes, a thirst for knowledge, a bravery standing up to your uncle, goodness ambition beyond ambition yes."

Harry stayed quiet he assumed the hat would sort him itself and did not need his input.

"That is correct" said that hat, which Harry found a bit creepy that it could pick up on his passive thought processes, "I can certainly sort you myself, some students prefer to talk their way through it, I can see however that you have no particular preference which I prefer as it means I can put you where you truly belong. Now despite all that I've mentioned what it truly amazing, what truly sets you apart is your never ceasing drive to get things done. Oh you'll do great things, Harry Potter and you will be helped enormously by HUFFLEPUFF"

The hat yelled the last word aloud to the hall and Harry pulled it off his head and headed over towards the middle table slightly to his left to the tumultuous applause of the student body. He found a set on the inner row back to back with Luna who was on the other middle table which turned out to be Ravenclaw's,

"Congratulations," he whispered over to her. He thought he caught a "thanks" and a "you too" but it was drowned out by another wave of applause as Tristan Reagan became a Gryffindor, he settled for a smile and turned around to his new housemates and watched the rest of the sorting.

After Ginny had also become a Gryffindor and Archie Winstanley a short stocky boy with curly auburn hair and Samantha Winborn a rather pudgy girl with bad acne had both become Hufflepuffs there was finally no one left to sort.

After a brief moment the wizard sitting right in the middle of the staff table, a wizened man with long white hair and a long white beard but a kind face with twinkling eyes stood up he held out his hands and intoned.

"Welcome, to another year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There is a time for making speeches, but it is not now. Enjoy!" He clapped his hands together with the last word and suddenly the tables were groaning under the weight of all manners of scrumptious food.

Harry was surprised at himself but at that particular point he was more fascinated by the food than he was by the magic. He heaped as much as he could find onto his plate and tucked in with a big smile on his face whilst the conversation flowed around him.

Whilst Harry was eating he was looking around the hall trying to get a gauge of the other people that he would be sharing the castle with. He saw Draco sitting at the Slytherin table and gave him a friendly nod and a small smile which he was happy to see returned. He also gave a little wave to Ginny who was sitting with her older brothers and a extremely bushy haired girl at the Gryffindor table.

Aside from the people Harry was fascinated by the amount of magic flooding the room. Students were performing little spells left right and centre, Harry assumed that most of them were meant to be rather innocuous however to him they showed up like little light shows, some of them he could get a feeling of what they were doing by the colour and weave of the magic and others were still a mystery.

Whilst continuing this scanning, occasionally pausing to politely engage in conversation with his fellow housemates who seemed like a cheery bunch, he noticed that one of the teachers seemed to be doing exactly the same thing has he was, that is to say constantly looking around the room.

This in itself was not alarming but what was, was the tendrils of magic that were coming from his eyes and flitting between the other students. Upon reflection Harry thought that he should have realized that he wouldn't be the only one with this "ability" however it was slightly disconcerting.

Having had extensive experience with the probe himself, it was no problems for him, when the tendril of magic wound its way over to his eyes, to quickly read what it was enquiring about and to send back a boring thought about how nice the food was to the rather pale man with the crooked nose and the mop of rather greasy looking black hair. However he did promise himself to keep on guard as he certainly didn't want his mind read, unless of course by a thousand year old piece of haberdashery he thought with a chuckle.

After a satisfying meal, which had drawn a few odd looks due to the amount of healthy food he was eating out of habit from living with the Dursleys, the food disappeared leaving the plates sparkling like new.

At the head table there was movement again as the elderly wizard who Harry had remembered was Albus Dumbledore, from Hagrid's memories, got to his feet again.

"I hope the wonderful feast was well received?"

There were murmurings of agreement from around the hall, even Harry couldn't help himself let slip a quiet "thanks very much."

"Good good, now that you are all fed and watered there are few start of term announcements to give out: Firstly I would like to welcome the new defense against the dark arts teacher Professor Gilderoy Lockhart"

There was tremendous applause mainly from the female contingent. Harry himself was clapping warmly he had after all had a little chat with the man in the bookshop and he had seemed like an alright guy if a little conceited.

Once the applause had abated Dumbledore continued, "I would like to remind everyone that the Forbidden Forest is strictly out of bounds," Harry made a mental note to explore it as quickly as possible. "Also as a reminder from our esteemed caretaker Mr. Filch; please remember that there is to be no magic used in the corridors and that the list of forbidden items is available for viewing on his office door should anyone choose to pursue it. Now off to bed chop chop!"

With that there was a scraping of chairs on the floor as the entire student body got to their feet. Harry made his way over to a older student with a prefect badge emblazoned on his robes, where the other first years from Hufflepuff seemed to be congregating.

"Right you lot, this way," said the boy. "remember this, because it's the quickest way to the common room," they wandered single file through a little doorway behind the head table and took a sharp left down a flight of stairs, down a long corridor which ended at a "T" intersection with had a picture of a bowl of fruit, they turned right and then ducked into a little nook that Harry would have walked strait past if no one had been guiding him and emerged into a tiny room with a few barrels which had "Vinegar" stamped on them.

"OK," said the prefect, "this is the entrance to the Hufflepuff common rooms, to gain entrance you need to tap this barrel," he indicated to the one on his left, "with your wand in the rhythm, Hel-ga Huff-le-puff," he demonstrated this whilst he did it and a door appeared in the wall, by this stage Harry was barely impressed by this amazing piece of magic.

"Oh and make sure you get the rhythm right," said the prefect, "you really don't want to know what happens if you don't!"

Harry and the other first years walked through the door into a cozy looking room covered in exotic plants and decorated with the warm hues of copper, the furniture was yellow and black and there were a few students sitting, getting an early start on their study or simply chatting with friends.

"First year dormitories are the ones that say 'First years' on them, boys are on the right, girls are on the left."

The first years split up and went into the rooms, Harry walked over to the bed where his trunk had been deposited and started stripping off for bed. There was a warm glow cast over the amply sized four poster by a copper lamp and a patchwork quilt that looked very inviting. Climbing in Harry realized that, yes, the bed was exactly as comfortable as it looked.

Looking around the room at his roommates he said with a grin, "So boys, are we going to destroy this place?"

"Yeah," roared a boy whom Harry remembered from the sorting to be called Oscar Mayberry, everyone else just looked confused.

"You know, have a good time, party hearty," said Harry,

"Oh," said another boy who Harry thought was called Woozy Wilkes, "that makes more sense but aren't we meant to be studying and stuff."

Harry shook his head laughing softly, "oh I've got a lot of work to do" and with that rather amusing thought his head hit the pillow and he fell strait to sleep.


	8. Chapter 7 Abra Kadabra Alakazam

A/N – once again apologies for how long this chapter has taken to get out, also some apologies for the content as it's been a while since I've written and I'm a bit rusty, please bear with me and I'll try and get up to scratch soon. I'm not going to make any promises about when the next chapter will be out but I will do my best. Thanks heaps for all of the reviews, please keep them coming.

A/N - Edit, thank you so so much to the reviewer who pointed out that I had got the head of house wrong, I have absolutely no idea what I was thinking, I must have been mixing up Luna and Harry or who knows, anyway I've edited this mistake now.

Chapter 5 – Abra Kadabra Alakazam

Harry awoke in the Hufflepuff dormitory bright and early as was his norm. A little bit stumped about what to do due to a sudden lack of chores he wandered over to the window, careful not to disturb his fellow slumbering classmates.

The weather was dreary, clouds in the sky and what looked like the occasional misting of rain. Despite this Harry thought that an early morning walk followed by a light breakfast would be a great way to start the day.

Fifteen minutes later found him out on the grounds wandering towards the lake, he hadn't bothered bundling up as he knew after a bit of exercise he'd be warm enough anyway.

The lake itself was beautiful, vast and blue Harry estimated that it must have covered several acres of ground and figuring that it would make for decent exercise he began to walk a lap of it.

As he made his way round he found a number of interesting plants, some of which he'd never seen before and others that he'd only recently become accustomed to in his potions text. Also hidden behind a copse of trees was some very suspicious flora which the location of which he took care to catalogue in his mind for later.

As he was rounding the last corner, turning away from the forest after walking along it's boundary for nearly a mile and starting to make his way back towards the school, the weather was starting to fine up and Harry was blessing his earlier decision to brave the cold in normal clothes, when, a movement from the centre of the lake caught his attention.

An enormous tentacle which must have been wider than Hagrid rose up from the water, this was followed by another and another, as what Harry assumed to be a gigantic squid began lolling around on the surface basking in the newly emerging sun.

After a few minutes of watching in fascination Harry was drawn out of his reverie by a rumbling of his stomach and began walking back towards the castle.

Breakfast at Hogwarts was apparently quite a laid on affair, from a full English to croissants and fruit or even pancakes and ice-cream whatever you wanted was right there. Not being one to regularly indulge in food Harry chose some yogurt and fruit and ate whilst waiting for the rest of the school to arise.

The remainder of the population began to trickle in around seven and the noise level increased spectacularly. Harry's dorm mates came and sat down near him and he engaged with them in a little light hearted speculation about what the classes today would bring.

Professor Sprout, a short dumpy woman with a kind face whom was dressed in moss green robes and smelt strongly of soil came up to their table and handed out timetables. Apparently she was their head of house, she appeared to be extremely approachable and greeted all of the first years by name. Considering that they had only been there one evening this impressed Harry greatly.

Harry, Oscar and Woozy after breakfast, wandered upstairs to the transfiguration classroom as directed by the timetable. They took their seats with the rest of the class and waited for the professor to come. Whilst waiting Harry pulled out the book and started re-reading the first chapter which detailed the methods used for so called "free transfiguration" that is turning on thing into another without any spells or incantations. It seemed to make some sense from his previous experiments however he couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong with the description.

He was shaken from his musings by the shuffling of tabby cat which he hadn't previously noticed in the front of the class, it arose from its warm patch near the window and stalked towards the table at the front of the room. Then quickly and, to Harry's eyes, with a huge amount of light, grew to the size and shape of a tall severe looking woman who Harry immediately recognized as Professor McGonagall from the sorting ceremony the previous night.

The class and Harry sat there amazed for a couple of seconds before bursting into applause. To Harry though the most exciting thing had not been the transformation but the fact that he hadn't realized that the cat was magical, it had no light surrounding it before it had begun to transform, he resolved that he certainly needed to do some discrete research to find out the extent of some of his powers.

Whilst he was contemplating this he the professor was lecturing, "… anyone found mucking around in this class will be asked to leave and not come back," she then promptly turned her table into a pig and back again with a tap of her wand. The class erupted in applause again.

This apparently wouldn't be what they would be practicing for some time, as they all began taking notes on the professor's lecture which was essentially, the first chapter of the book Harry had been reading with a few extra details thrown in.

With about half an hour left in the class McGonagall handed around a match to each student and asked them to turn it into a needle. Harry knew he could do this his way in his sleep, however he was here to learn, not to show off so he checked over the notes pulled out his wand and began to visualize the change, once he knew what he was looking for he waved the wand let a small amount of magic trickle down his arm as described and watched as the match smoothly transformed into what looked like a needle.

However it wasn't a needle. He could tell just by looking that this wasn't the same as his transformations, he could see that the "needle" was still glowing with his magical hue which still had an extremely thin gossamer like thread stretching out and touching his core. Also whilst he couldn't see it he could tell that the needle was still actually a match, it just looked like a needle.

When he made things using his magic previously there had been no magic on them once they had changed. He decided to check the book before attempting again to see where he had gone wrong. The book seemed to indicate that the time a transfiguration would last related directly to a product of the power of the wizard and the distance from the object that wizard was. It said this time could last anywhere up to a couple of days for an exceptionally powerful wizard who kept the object on his person.

Harry was going to read more about this because he had objects that he'd "transfigured" months ago which he still used on a daily basis when a voice said; "wonderful work Mr. Potter, to produce such a stunning example on your first attempt!"

Harry looked up, the professor was displaying his needle for the class to see, "20 points to Hufflepuff," she said.

This only served to confuse Harry more because as far as he was concerned he'd gotten it wrong but he decided to save his questions until after class.

When the bell rang he told his classmates to go on ahead whilst he waited patiently by Professor Mcgonagal's desk.

"Mr. Potter, that was excellent work today, I'm very happy that you've picked up the subject so quickly, how can I help?"

"Well that's just the thing professor, I'm not sure I got it right, I don't know how to explain it but the needle still felt like a match." Harry had decided that he would keep his ability to visualize magic to himself as it appeared that he was the only one he knew who could do it.

"Ah that's the trick right there Mr. Potter," said she said sounding delighted, "it still is a match, it's not something that many people pick up on, by preforming transfiguration you are lending your magic to the object to make it appear and work like a needle but once your magic is removed it will once again just be a match."

"So is it possible to actually change a match into a needle?" Harry asked,

"Well yes it is, but it's an extremely obscure and difficult branch of magic called Alchemy, something that isn't actually taught at this school, however if you're interested once you attain a bit more skill, you may be able to ask Professor Dumbledore for some lessons he is one of the better known alchemists in the world," she said with a chuckle.

Harry of course remembered alchemy from his failed attempted of changing chalk to gold, "I thought alchemy was the process of changing things to gold?" he asked.

"Oh no Mr. Potter, that's just a muggle myth, no conventional magic can turn something normal into something of intrinsic value, so no precious metals, currency or anything else, the magic required to do so is long lost."

"Oh alright, well I'd probably be best heading to my next class professor, I'll see you soon," with that Harry headed down the stairs outside to Herbology.

Herbology was quite frankly boring, it was basically gardening with slightly magical plants, sure there were some exciting things in the other greenhouses but certainly nothing that they'd be touching for the next two years. The subject was taught by their head of house Professor Sprout which explained the soil smell.

On the upside the Hufflepuffs had the class with the Ravenclaws, The rest of his classmates seemed to stick together however Harry wasted no time in commandeering Luna for his partner, the cute blonde girl seemed only too happy to join him.

They were meant to be repotting and collecting the seeds of a glow in the dark dandelion, no different to the muggle one except for the fact that they were black and would glow bright green at night. Apparently they were used for a variety of potions relating to courage but it didn't do much to improve the dull work. What did improve it was Harry and Luna carrying on their inane questioning from the train of each other.

Luna and Harry seemed to get on very well together, Harry had, had a bit of experience with girls from his primary school, when he and Charles would hang out with them but they were often quite vapid and the boys would really only hang around with them for their good looks.

Luna was different, she was happy to chat, happy to do her share of the admittedly quite dirty work. At the end of the class they handed their repotted dandilions back to Professor Sprout along with their bag of seeds. She rewarded them both with a smile and once again Harry was struck by her kindly nature and was feeling extremely happy with his placement in Hufflepuff. They then walked out the greenhouses, Once inside the entrance hall Harry turned to go towards the Dungeons for Potions and Luna went upstairs for charms.

A couple of steps down Harry was struck with sudden inspiration, turning quickly he moved quickly up to where Luna was still walking upstairs he gently grabbed the crook of her elbow which wasn't holding her bag and she turned round surprised.

"Did you…" he began, and ran his hand through his hair suddenly struck by how hard this was to do, "would you, like to go for a walk around the grounds with me after dinner?" He finished rather quickly.

Luna, who had looked puzzled started turning a bright shade of red, "umm, sure," she stammered out before giving him grin and bolting upstairs.

Harry who was starting to feel quite hot himself, wandered back downstairs in a daze. His little conversation with Luna had only lasted a couple of minutes so he was in the classroom with plenty of time to spare. Precisely as the bell rung the door slammed open and the professor walked in, the same on who had tried to read his mind at the welcoming feast. "Good afternoon," he began in a low dangerous voice, "my name is Professor Snape and I will be your potions instructor, There will be little wand waving in this class, in fact I doubt if many of you will appreciate that this is magic, the subtle simmering of a concoction which could bewitch the mind, or ensnare the senses. I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory or even put a stopper on death, if," his voice which had almost begun to his, now changed to a far more straitforward if sarcastic tone, "you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads that I usually have to teach."

Snape then took the role, he paused at Harry's name, "ah yes, Mr. Potter, our new… celebrity," Harry, who hadn't let anyone get to him with a verbal jibe since he was four responded with a polite, "yes sir."

"Now," said Snape, "we are trialing a new approach for a number of the classes this year, certain second year students whom have proven themselves competent in a particular field are given the option of tutoring in classes in exchange for missing classwork which is deemed simple enough for them to catch up on their own." As he said this, four students walked through the door, "let me introduce, Ernest Macmillan, Mandy Brocklehurst, Lavender Brown and Draco Malfoy,"

Harry smiled at Draco, who returned it he also gave a nod to Ernest whom he recognized from his own dorm, he too gave Harry a friendly wave back.

Snape then made a potion recipe for curing boils appear on the board with a tap of his wand, another tap caused the ingredient cabinet to open and before long Harry was cutting up Ingredients on a table.

He had been partnered with Oscar for the day which was fine by him, Oscar was quite an agreeable chap and he was currently shredding the pufferfish cheeks. Harry grabbed the pig skin to start cutting the warts off it, an essential ingredient for this potion, when he realized he'd forgotten his knife.

Thinking quickly he put his hand below the table and made an incredibly sharp paring knife appear in his hand formed out of his magic, then making it look like he pulled if from his bag he got to work.

After a few minutes, Draco wandered around to their table to see how they were going with their potion. "All good Harry?" he asked, ignoring Oscar, who, to be fair was far too into his shredding to notice,

"Yeah going well," the potion which they were about three quarters of the way through looked exactly as described on the board.

"Any questions?" Draco asked peering into the cauldron which was simmering nicely,

"Just one,"

"Shoot."

"I get from the book that you have to add all the oil based ingredients at the start because it's an oil base and the emulsifier can't be added until the cauldron is taken off the heat, but how come you leave the pufferfish cheeks until last, I thought they were oil based?"

Draco looked a bit stumped "Huh, yeah you're right there Harry, I'm not sure, I'll tell you what I'll give you a tip that generally only the Slytherins get, Snape doesn't like unnecessary questions, always do some research first to try and find out the answer by yourself before you ask him anything."

Harry understanding this nodded and finished slicing the cucumber into exactly 49 pieces and then began cutting each slice into seven pieces. Draco was looking curiously at his knife, "that's really cool, where did you get it from?"

"Oh this, it's magic," said Harry absentmindedly then realizing his mistake "..all, it's a magical knife"

Draco nodded but he didn't look convinced. "Well anyway your potion looks fine, I better wander around a bit, don't be a stranger"

At the end of the class Harry and Oscar each took a vial of their potion up to Snape where they each got an approving look.

After Potions, the Hufflepuffs had a spare period before dinner so Harry decided to take Draco at his word and go to the library to do a bit of potions research before the next class, After getting quite lost he asked a couple of the portraits who appeared to be sentient which was the best way to go and soon found himself where he needed to be.

He introduced himself to Madame Pince, the librarian, who provided him with a pamphlet for the library which detailed the locations of all the various subjects, and study places.

Grabbing a couple of books on potions, as well as one on herbology and transfiguration, figuring he could get todays homework out the way before dinner he set to work. The short essay's that McGonagall and Sprout had asked for didn't take him longer than 20 minutes. So he spent the remaining time looking up some of the questions arose around potions making, he found the sea faring animals (such as pufferfish) are classified as water based due to the fact they belong in the water, this still didn't make sense to him, as fish is an animal and has oil in it, as he couldn't find and more information on the subject he figured that this would be fine to ask the professor.

When the bell rang for the end of class Harry was already on his way down to dinner, it was only as he entered the great hall that he remembered that he had a "date" with Luna tonight afterwards, his belly doing flip flops he took a seat on the Gryffindor side of the Hufflepuff table.

Dinner was roast chicken and vegetables, after piling a decent amount onto his plate he looked up and saw Luna on the Ravenclaw table sitting just across from him and caught her eye, they smiled at each other and then blushed furiously and looked away.

"Harry, mate, what's the matter? You've gone all red" said Archie Winstanly a fair haired boy from his dorm whom he hadn't spoken to much yet.

"Oh nothing, just got something caught down my throat," Harry replied, feigning a cough. Harry spent the rest of the meal chatting amicably with his class mates about families and so forth, he found out that Archie was a muggleborn along with Eldric Moore, a normally quiet boy, Jessica Deanda and Magdalen Klingel. Woozy was a half-blood whose mother had fallen in love with a waiter whilst holidaying in Thailand and so was Samantha Winborn. Oscar and a girl called August Moon, a rather unfortunate name as she had quite a round head, were the only pure bloods in the group of Hufflepuff first years this year.

Harry shared what little he knew of his family, and was actually filled in on it a bit on it by the rest of his classmates, he said that he lived with his aunt and uncle and that he didn't get on with them but didn't give any details.

All too soon dinner was over and the flip flops in Harry's belly had started again, amid the scratching of chairs on stone floor he wandered over to the Ravenclaw table to find Luna, trying not to make a big deal of it lest people get the wrong idea, he smiled at her and reached out and softly took her hand.

She went scarlet but walked out the main entrance with him. With the weather still being quite warm there was still plenty of sunshine left, so they started to retrace Harry's steps of earlier in the day around the lake, the giant squid was back to its usual tricks which gave them some entertainment, they chatted a bit about the classes they'd had, from what Luna said charms sounded like a lot of fun, and history of magic sounded terrible, apparently it was taught by a ghost who only had one tone of voice and was obsessed with goblin rebellions.

They exchanged stories about each other's home lives, again Harry didn't mention how bad his relatives were just that he didn't get along too well with them. Luna apparently was a single child who lived with her father, her mother had died when she was quite young, Harry being quite well versed in civilized conversation didn't ask about the details. Her father it turned out, ran a magazine called the Quibbler which had a lot of alternative readers. Honestly Harry thought that some of the stories sounded a little crazy but who was he to judge.

Luna apparently lived quite close to Ginny whom she grew up with they were quite good friends and would often spend time at each other's place.

" Actually I've been meaning to ask," said Harry, "what's the go with her, she was really strange on the train."

"Oh that, well she's had a crush on you ever since she read about you," Harry who had seen the odd children's books detailing his unbelievable exploits didn't need any further information. Still he thought that's a probably taking it a bit far, although it did explain some of her behavior.

They both had a bit of a nervous laugh about this and kept walking, they reached a nice rock and took a seat, Harry's heart was beginning to thump as Luna had sat down quite close to him still holding his hand. She turned back from the lake and caught him looking at her and they both blushed and turned their heads back.

Harry steeling his nerve looked at her again, she really was pretty with her blonde hair falling down the side of her very cute face, she looked up and caught him looking, again she made to turn away, but he reached out and tenderly cupped her cheek in his hand. They were already sitting quite close, but he leaned towards her so that their mouths were almost touching. She hesitated for a second and then bridged the gap.

Harry's whole world exploded, this was the best thing ever, the warm sensation of Luna's lips on his own, they didn't do much just keeping their lips together slowly moving their jaws. But for Harry this was ecstasy. After a couple of minutes they got tired and just sat together on the rock, Harry with his arm around Luna each just enjoying the other's company.

Before too long however the sun began to get low in the sky and they decided it would be best to head back, they separated at the entrance hall Harry giving Luna a chaste kiss before sending her up to her tower.

He went back to the Hufflepuff dorms in a daze, letting his feet take him, he collapsed into bed and was asleep before he knew it.


	9. Chapter 8 Death blood and cheese

A/N - I thought I'd give everyone a little bit of a treat, another chapter this week. Hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think, like it? Hate it? Please review! Thanks for reading

Chapter 8

The next morning after another walk around the lake, with much reminiscing of the previous night, and a hearty yet healthy breakfast, found the Hufflepuff first years sitting in their Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom.

Harry who had read all the books cover to cover was quite excited at the prospect of this class. Despite his advances with his own power directly using it to defend himself, or attack someone else, wasn't actually something that had ever crossed his mind.

The classroom was oddly adorned, with a couple of large portraits of Professor Lockhart along with a number of strange tribal talisman which looked as though they hailed from all over the world. Quite possibly, Harry assumed, gifts from the people he'd assisted.

After a couple of minutes the Professor burst through the door and strode confidently up to the front of the room. "Welcome, welcome," he began with a warm smile, "to your very first Defense Against the Dark Arts class, what you will learn within these walls will prepare you well for a life, in what can be one of the most dangerous societies in the world, Wizarding Briton."

He took role call quickly, eyes flitting around the room whilst he did so.

"I see that you've all managed to obtain a copy of my selected works, which is excellent news. Now how many of you have had a chance to flick through them?" A few people in the class, Harry included raised their hands.

"Good, good, well before we get going we're going to do a little test just to see how well you've read them, a lot of these questions don't relate directly to defense but it should gauge how well you absorb information, Mr. Wilkes if you would be so kind."

As Woozy handed around the tests, Harry had a look at his own. The questions were, unusual to say the least, _1. What is Gildory Lockhart's favorite colour? 16. What is Gildory Lockhart's preferred brand of conditioner? _All the way down to _ date is Gildory Lockhart's birthday and what would his ideal gift be? _

Harry had a bit of a chuckle, it wasn't after all a bad way to figure out if your students had read the books and it certainly made for a lighthearted way to begin the year of classes. He started to go through filling out the answers as best he could.

As he went through the questions quite easily, he heard quite a bit of giggling going on mainly from the female contingent of the class. Once it appeared that everyone had filled out all they could, Lockhart collected the tests with a wave of his wand and had a small peruse through them.

"Tut tut, hardly any of you seem to remember that my favorite colour is lilac, I say so quite clearly in Year with the Yeti." After a few more comments like this he said, "but Harry Potter, has remembered that I like to use the muggle shampoo and conditioner Pantine, in fact," he flipped the sheet he was holding, "full marks Mr. Potter, very well done."

Harry turning a bit red noticed some smirks and giggling coming from his classmates, "Thank you professor," he said.

"Now down to business, during your time in this class you may face some of your worst fears and nightmares, I want you to know that no harm will befall you whilst I am here," As he was speaking he pulled what looked like a birdcage, with a cloth draped over it, out from under his desk. The class had gone silent now and Harry noticed a few people looking on with quite a bit of trepidation.

"I ask you not to scream, you might provoke them!" With that he removed the cloth with a flourish to reveal six or seven impish looking creatures electric blue in colour with little wings on their back, they were buzzing around in the cage making faces at the class.

"Cornish pixies," snorted Samantha, "they're hardly dangerous are they?"

Lockhart smiled at her, "no of course not, I wouldn't bring you anything truly dangerous on your first day, however don't underestimate them they can be devilishly tricky little blighters, intent on destruction and mayhem, and for anyone living in the British Isles, learning to deal with an infestation is an absolute must. If everyone can put all their belongings aside from their wands in their bags and under their desk we can get started."

Whilst the class was shuffling around complying with the request Lockhart continued to lecture, "Now there are a number of spells that can be used to incapacitate pixies however there is a peculiar one invented directly for the purpose, it is a mild form of mind control which only works on this particular species. The incantation is _peskipiksi pesternomi _and the wand movement is like such," he demonstrated as he said this. "Could you all please practice and then I'll give a demonstration."

The room was suddenly filled with calls of a lot of words beginning with "P" barely any of them even close to what the professor described.

"Yes it's a bit of a tongue twister isn't it, anyway let's see what you make of them." Lockhart said with a chuckle and with that he opened the cage door.

It was pandemonium the pixies tried to grab at anything that wasn't nailed down, they pulled hair they grabbed at wands, a couple started to lift the portrait of Lockhart and made to throw it out the window. Harry couldn't imagine what would have happened if they had have left their books and ink on the tables. He personally was shooting little showers of red sparks from his wand at any that came to close to him. This quickly caught on and stopped a lot of the attacks on the students.

After what felt like 10 minutes but was probably closer to 30 seconds, no one had attempted the spell yet so Lockhart at the front of the class stood up and bellowed, "_peskipiksi pesternomi." _

Suddenly the room was quiet, the pixies whilst not immobilized were not moving just gently flapping in place with their little wings where they were, a calm look on their face.

"If you would be so kind as to return to the cage," Lockhart said, opening the door. All of the pixies flew back calmly and orderly into the cage and shut the door behind them.

"These little household charms are not only useful but they provide a good grounding for learning to deal with some actual dark creatures as well as learning to combat the effects of spells, now I'm going to get each of you up to have a go at this charm."

One by one the class went up to the front and a single pixie was released, it appeared to be once you got the pronunciation down it was quite easy to perform the charm and once applied the pixie would respond to any commands you gave it. Harry was quite impressed. He along with four other classmates earned Hufflepuff 5 points each for getting the charm right on the first try.

Just as the last person finished the bell rang and Lockhart called out "Homework will be a small essay on five other common household pests and the methods for dealing with them, to be handed in next week."

Once outside the classroom Harry suddenly became the object of quite a few jibes over his excellent test result, "do you loooove Lockhart Harry?"

"Are you going to kiss him?

"Are you going to get him a beautiful present for his birthday?"

"Are you going to be his girlfriend?"

"Ah shut up," Harry said, honestly he didn't mind too much, the barbs were good natured and said with a smile, "I pick up most things when I read and I'd already read all the books through, what can I say, they were really interesting!"

This seemed sufficient to get everyone off his back, after all Harry was right, the books were very interesting, and the class had been great fun.

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The rest of the day passed without incident, Harry and Luna exchanged smiles again across the great hall but they didn't get a chance to speak. After dinner Professor Sprout told the first years to get an early night as they would be having their first astronomy class at midnight tonight.

Apparently this was their only class that wasn't scheduled at a particular time, but would be announced with as much warning as possible for when the sky would be clear.

So at 11:30 pm that night after a couple of hours of sleep Harry woke up and roused his dorm mates. They got dressed and rubbing their eyes with telescopes and books in hand trudged upstairs to the astronomy tower.

Astronomy was taught by Professor Sinistra, a handsome looking woman probably in her mid to late forties. She started off with a lecture about the theory of the subject and then they all got to work preparing a star map of a small quadrant of the night sky.

The subject itself seemed quite dull however its applications were incredibly interesting, the positions of the stars and planets could apparently have direct effects on the power of certain spells and potions and indeed some of them could only be performed at times when the correct stars and planets were in alignment. Also there was a particular branch of magic called divination which could allegedly use the positions to determine the future, although this was said to be quite difficult.

Needless to say Harry thought this was a class that was worth learning as much as possible about and resolved to study hard.

The class only lasted an hour so they were back in the common room before they knew it, Harry who normally had far less sleep than he had been having wasn't tired at all. He decided to sit up in the common room and do his homework for Lockhart. After a few minutes with his nose buried in Wandering with Werewolves he heard a strange swish.

He looked up to see what could only be a ghost passing through the stone wall and settling down in a seat across from him. He was a jovial looking fellow wearing a black cape and a white collar, Harry assumed he was some sort of priest or friar. He was looking at Harry with a pleasant expression.

"Hello," Harry said,

"Hello, young Hufflepuff, my name's The Fat Friar," He said with a grin, "but you can call me Friar."

Harry grinned back, "Hello Friar, my name's Harry Potter, but you can call me Harry."

The ghost was an interesting conversation partner, Harry found out that he had died from the black plague and had returned to his old school to help his fellow charges, he had lived in a lonely time and hadn't had many friends in life. So he was happy to haunt and not pass over as there were plenty of people to talk to now.

Harry had enquired what ghosts did to keep busy. The Friar had replied that they often didn't need to do much, they could pass for months without conversation or movement without getting bored but it was nice to speak to people occasionally. Although they did occasionally have events, there were clubs devoted to ghosts favorite topic (how they died) and they would celebrate the day they died in a similar manner to birthdays.

"In fact," said the Friar, "its Nearly Headless Nick's 500th deathday party this Halloween, he's the resident Gryffindor ghost, it's going to be quite the occasion."

Harry decided right there and then that he needed to get an invitation to that, it sounded like too good a party to miss. After a bit more conversation Harry decided to turn in, he bade goodnight to the ghost and snuck into his dorm room to sleep.

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The days at Hogwarts seemed to pass impossibly quickly, Harry tried to keep up as much of a routine as possible, he rose early when he could, and exercised around the lake, sometime running sometimes walking. He ate early and well and kept well on top of his school work.

He was in fact finding the class work extremely easy, and often spent his free time with his nose in some book or other, that he had found in the library looking up new spells. He had also started working on his wandless magic again trying to develop it in new ways in accordance with some of the new subjects in his classes.

All this wasn't to say that he was a recluse, He spent a lot of time with his classmates and just as with primary school became a sort of unofficial leader. They were a decent bunch, nothing amazing to speak of but then again Harry had never had the highest opinions of others. He was also enjoying the time that he spent with Luna, they went for walks whenever they could and had done a bit more kissing which they both found enthralling, but they were still only seeing each other about once a week and Harry would be hesitant to call her his girlfriend.

At the end of the second week of class the first years had had their first broom flying class. This was taught by a hawk like woman, Madame Hooch, who, he had been informed, was also the referee for all of the quidditch matches. Harry had done quite a bit of reading on quidditch, as it was pretty much the only thing half the boys spoke about, and had formed the opinion that it was reasonably similar to handball.

The flying class had gone brilliantly, despite never being on a broom before Harry was a natural. After Madame Hooch had gone through some of the more basic movements and controls, she had let those who had flown before and those who showed a natural aptitude for it, do some free flying.

Harry was in heaven; he swooped and soared, looped and dove. The school broom which he had been riding was incredibly slow and bucked around a bit, but he managed to control it just fine. Upon landing again he had been greeted by awestruck looks from not only his classmates but Madame Hooch herself.

She had pulled him aside after class and mentioned that the Hufflepuff quidditch team was a bit short this year and that she would have a quick word to the new captain Cedric Diggory and try and organize him a tryout.

This had happened the following week, Cedric was a handsome forth year student whose easy going nature mirrored Harry's own, he had only been made captain of the Hufflepuff team at the start of the year and had been left a chaser short.

As it turned out there wasn't a huge amount of interest in the empty spot this year and the only two people who turned up the tryout were Harry and a rather arrogant second year called Zacharias Smith.

They and the rest of the team had assembled down at the quidditch pitch. Harry had seen this in the distance from his walks around the lake. It was impressive, a huge oval with three golden hoops 50 feet off the ground on each end. The oval was surrounded by grandstands adorned in the house colours.

"Okay," said Cedric, obviously nervous having never done this before. "Since there's only the two of you trying out I think we can just concentrate on that single chaser spot. So we'll play a little pickup game of four on four no seekers. You both know the rules yeah?"

Harry and Zacharias nodded. Cedric then made the two starting chasers, Tamsin Applebee and Malcom Preece captains and got them to choose teams. Tamsin picked the keeper Herbert Fleet, one of the beaters Anthony Rickett and Zacharias for her team.

Malcom got Cedric who would be playing keeper, the other beater Michael McManus and Harry. They would play with no seekers and Cedric had informed Harry and Zacharias that it wasn't necessarily the team that one who would get the spot but whoever he thought was the better player, both skillfully and in terms of the Hufflepuff values.

Since the outcome didn't really matter they didn't bother keeping time or score and just got in the air and started playing.

Harry found that he loved quidditch, he couldn't describe how wonderful it was flying through the air. The sense of team camaraderie, the adrenaline rush as he evaded a bludger and pounded a perfect pass strait into Malcom's hands.

He had no idea how long they had been up in the air when Cedric called them all to come down. But he was exhausted. Not that they'd know because they weren't keeping score but he must have slammed at least ten goals past Herbert and he must have been hit five or six times with the single bludger they were using for the game.

He was battered, bruised, but despite being exhausted was desperate for more. Zacharias was giving Harry a filthy look, which was unsurprising considering how much Harry had dominated the game. Cedric cleared his throat. "Well I think we all know that there's only one person who can have the spot," the dirty look Harry was getting intensified. "Harry, congratulations, we'll look forward to seeing you at practices."

From then on in Harry had one more thing to occupy his time, Practice was held 3 days a week for a couple of hours, it was generally in the morning when he was out exercising anyway so it didn't really interrupt his routine much anyway which was good as he was beginning to find his time more and more filled.

Harry got on well with his teammates, there was an real sense of mate-ship there that can really only be developed by playing a sport with someone, they laughed and jibed, told leud jokes and just generally got along well. Tamsin was quite a tomboy and despite being the only girl on the team got on really well with everyone, giving as good as she got.

Harry's skill with handball from the times he played with Charles really shone through, he was amazing with the quaffle. His passing and shooting were pinpoint and he was brilliant at intercepts. Also despite being such a small skinny pre-teen, he was fierce. He would bump and block, he could take a bludger to the chest and keep right on flying, this particular talent had been demonstrated many times at practice. To say that Cedric was thrilled with his progress would be an understatement.

One day after a particularly wet and muddy practice, Harry bumped into the man he had been wanting to see for some time. He was walking down the corridor when he saw a ghost reading a letter, the strange thing was that his head was hanging off a piece of skin so it was upside down on his shoulder and he was holding the letter so he could see it properly.

"Excuse me sir," Harry said politely. Remembering his conversation with the Fat Friar about the Gryffindor ghost "Your name wouldn't happen to be Nick would it?"

"Indeed my good lad and you must be Harry Potter, you're the talk of the castle you know." He said in a disheartened voice. Harry unsurprised at this news was instead more focused on trying to get an invite to the deathday party.

"Why are you looking so morose Sir Nick?"

"Ah well you see," said Nick brandishing the letter, "My application to join the headless hunt has once again been rejected. You would think that three layers of skin and sinew holding my head on would classify as properly beheaded, wouldn't you?"

Harry obviously supposed to agree nodded eagerly, he remembered the Fat Friar telling him that ghosts formed clubs based on the manner in which they died, he assumed this must be about one of those.

"But nooooo, not for Sir Patrick de properly decapitated Podmore," Harry snorted with laughter and Nick looked at him appreciatively before reading from the letter, "_We can only accept huntsmen whose heads have parted company with their bodies. You will appreciate that it would be impossible otherwise for members to participate in hunt activities such as Horseback Head-Juggling and Head Polo. It is with the greatest regret, therefore, that I must inform you that you do not fulfil our requirements. With very best wishes _Blah Blah Blah"

"If you like Sir Nick, I'd be happy to have a word with him on your behalf, after all the voice of a minor celebrity can go a long way."

"Could you my boy?" Said Nick "Oh that would be wonderful, the whole Hunt will be at my deathday party, it was of course intended to be a celebration of my joining them but… Halloween in the dungeons, you are of course invited."

"Of course Nick, I'd be happy to, would it be possible to bring a friend?"

"The more the gloomier!" said Nick with a smile. Content with his invite Harry begged his pardon and left to shower before he was caught by Argus Filch, the notorious caretaker.

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Halloween rolled around quicker than Harry could Harry could have possibly expected. Luna, obsessed with the obscure as she was, was more than thrilled with the invitation. So whilst the school was getting ready for what promised to be a spectacular feast in the Great Hall Luna and Harry were meeting just above the dungeons.

Dressed in black as well as their cloaks and gloves, they had been warned by the Friar that the presence of so many ghosts makes the air quite cold, they took hands and begun their decent to the party.

A little bit past their potions classroom they felt the temperature start to dip, following the cold they made their way down a few more flights of stairs before they found the party. The room was huge, and it was nearly completely filled with ghosts. There must have been hundreds of them.

Harry and Luna moved through the crowd quite easily socializing with the ghosts. Luna introduced Harry to a teary looking individual called myrtle who was happy to tell them haunted the second floor girl's bathroom, despite her appearance she seemed to be having a good time.

They exchanged greetings with Peeves the poltergeist, a notorious prankster that most of the students detested but Harry got on quite well with, he found his pranks amusing and due to his quick reflexes and powerful magic was always able to avoid being on the losing end of them. Peeves was on his best behavior tonight, due to the presence of the Bloody Baron, the resident ghost of Slytherin.

Along the side of the room was a string quartet which was providing the room with "music" it sounded like fingernails scratching down a blackboard to begin with but Harry found the longer he listened the more appropriate it sounded and after a few minutes was actually starting to enjoy the tunes.

The centre of the room held a huge long table which was covered in food, moving closer they found a huge selection however much of it was rotten or moldy. They stood by wondering for a bit before seeing a ghost passing through the table with his mouth open.

"Can you taste it if you pass through it?" Harry asked,

"Almost." He said sadly.

"They must let it rot to give it a stronger flavor," Harry said to Luna, receiving a nod of agreement.

Looking around the table a bit more they found a wheel of blue cheese which was quite pungent, feeling brave Harry cut himself off a slice with the silver knife and found it to be strong but delicious. Luna promptly followed suit.

With a bit more looking around the table the found some more food that wasn't actually repugnant and managed to get quite a good meal in.

Making their way through the party, they found Nick chatting with a few friends who had come in from France. He was delighted to see Harry and Luna and promised he'd come back and speak with them later but for now it was time for his speech.

"My Lord, Ladies and Gentlemen," he began, "It's wonderful to have you here on this most somber of occasions…"

He was about to continue when the noise of a hunting horn interrupted him. A troupe of ghosts erupted through the wall, all carrying their heads under their arms. One of them came up to Nick and slapped him on the back "Nick my boy, how are you?"

"Well actually Patrick I'm just in the middle of my speech, so if you could…" Harry assumed this was the ghost that Nick was complaining about when he was speaking to him about the headless hunt.

But Patrick had stopped listening and he and the other headless ghosts had started playing Head Hockey to the great amusement of the crowd. Harry watched closely as Nick attempted to regain his audience without success, once it became apparent that he couldn't do it himself Harry cleared his throat loudly.

Patrick placed his head back on his neck and looked up, "liv'uns!" He exclaimed and his head fell off his shoulders again in false shock and the crowd laughed uproariously.

"Very amusing," said Harry drily, "however you've interrupted my good friend Nick's speech, I think everyone would be much appreciative if you sat down and let him finish."

As he spoke Harry allowed a small amount of magic to creep into his voice and eyes giving his voice a powerful quality which demanded obedience and his eyes a dangerous twinkle. It was a cheap trick which he figured out since starting Hogwarts, he'd actually gotten the idea from the Headmaster who's eyes twinkled, albeit in a friendly manner, he wasn't sure if it was the same thing but it worked well and he wasn't afraid to use it.

Patrick promptly shut up after a mumbled apology and Nick with a thankful look went on with his speech.

Half an hour later Harry was wishing he'd shut up and let the game continue, Nick had to be the most boring speech giver on the planet. He was worse than their history of magic teacher professor Binns and that was saying something.

After another ten minutes the speech was finally over and Harry and Luna resumed their walking around the table chatting with the ghosts, they found a nice old bottle of wine on the table, and lacking any (living) adults to tell them off they decided to have a glass or two.

The party continued in this vein, Harry found himself chatting a bit to Nick's French friends, they and Luna for that matter, had been very impressed with his French and whilst his accent wasn't perfect he found that he was right and had been able to carry on quite a decent conversation as well as being able to interpret for Luna.

A bit later in the night found Luna and Harry slow dancing to the scratchy string music, occasionally stealing kisses. They had both had quite a bit to drink and were feeling very happy with themselves. Some of the ghosts were milling around them dancing as well, often times with unusual form to get around their disfiguring injuries such as Nick's French friend who was had to hold his head on an unusual angle due to an arrow coming out of his forehead.

"RIP TEAR KILL!"

"What was that?" Harry exclaimed, broken out of his alcohol and hormone induced daze.

"It's nothing Harry," said Luna looking slightly confused, "come back and dance."

Harry was just about to take her again when,

"BLOOD, I SMELL BLOOD!"

He stopped and turned towards the wall where the voice was coming from,

"SO HUNGRY FOR SO LONG."

The voice seemed to be moving upstairs Harry made to follow it, he didn't know what it was but he certainly wanted to find out.

"Come on," He said to Luna grabbing her hand and making to pull her up the stairs, "Let's go find out what this is."

"I want to stay here," she said petulantly

Harry wasn't expecting this, he couldn't figure out why someone wouldn't want to investigate something like this. "Well I'm going, you can stay if you want," he said frustrated, he could hear the voice again but it was muffled as it was too far above him.

"I'm having a good time," Luna said, "I want you to stay here with me!"

"Listen, you're not the most important thing in the world alright, sometimes I need to do things which are actually important!" Harry seethed, barely keeping his voice under control.

"Well we're through then," Luna yelled tears starting to come out of her eyes, and she ran off in the direction of Myrtle.

Harry shook his head in frustration and took off upstairs trying to find a trace of the voice again. It had apparently gone. The whole way up he was cursing to himself about stupid girls and their self-involved little lives.

He got up to the second floor without hearing another word from the voice and he was just about to give up and go to bed, when he came across something very strange. On the wall ahead of him was huge writing which looked like it had been finger-painted with blood and next to it a strange furry thing.

The writing read "THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED ONCE MORE, ENEMIES OF THE HEIR BEWARE" and on closer inspection the furry object was a cat, not just any cat but the strange hateful creature belonging to the caretaker Filch.

Harry was just about to leave and let someone else discover this little shop of horrors when he heard a creaking. A look over the banner revealed that the entrance to the great hall had been opened and the students were coming out after the Halloween feast.

Harry had nowhere to go and sure enough, almost immediately he found himself on the pointy end of the accusing finger of Argus Filch.

"You, you killed my cat!"

"I did no such thing!" Harry said quite indignant,

"I'll kill you!" Filch started rushing at Harry who was preparing to defend himself when,

"ARGUS!" it was Dumbledore, "restrain yourself, this is clearly dark magic of the most advanced," he said whilst inspecting the cat, "no first year could have achieved this sort of damage."

Harry was ready to be indignant again at this, after all he figured he'd have a pretty good crack at it, but given the circumstances thought better of it.

"Someone has murdered my cat," screamed Filch, "I want to see some punishment!"

"She doesn't actually appear to be dead," said Dumbledore still poking, "however here is not the place to discuss it, let us move on," aware of the conspicuous gazes of the entire student body.

"We can use my office," said Lockhart, "It's closest from here."

"Thank you Gildory,"

Dumbledore, Filch, Lockhart, Snape and Harry all adjourned to Lockhart's office. As they walked Snape interrogated Harry. "What were you doing there Potter? Why weren't you at the feast?"

Harry explained about the deathday party and that despite the generally rotten nature of the food he'd managed to find enough to eat to not need dinner, he didn't mention the wine but he got the feeling Snape suspected. Whilst he was on the lookout for it, Harry noticed Snape didn't try to read his mind, he figured Snape like himself generally relied on his mundane skills to read people.

In the office Dumbledore continued his poking of the cat and no one was saying anything, Harry, not a hundred percent sure why he was there, decided to make the most of it and asked Dumbledore what he was doing.

Dumbledore sounding delighted that someone was interested, seemed only too happy to take Harry through the finer points of the tests he was performing.

"You see Harry all life is inherently magical and initially I thought that her stiff appearance was like nothing deceased that I'd ever come across. So I decided to check. A simple _revelo _fine tuned enough to show minimal activity will determine if a creature is alive or dead, very useful for healers. The small traces of magic showed that she is still very much alive.

As that is the case, I have been trying to determine what it wrong, is she stunned? A _Finite Incantatem _has no effect so we must assume not, this also rules out a full body bind along with other basic curses or jinxes.

A magical revelation spell will determine the type of magic which was used on her. This isn't a spell as such, rather more free magic than that."

Harry could actually already see the tendrils of magic around and inside her, with his knowledge of spell weaving improving considerably in his time at Hogwarts, he could tell that it was some sort of animal attack which had caused the cat harm and it was also not allowing her any movement, as though she had been frozen solid

As Dumbledore poked her with his wand again he saw the small tendrils from Dumbledore's wand enter the body and interact with the cat's magic before returning like blood flowing through veins.

"She has been petrified Argus, but by who or what I cannot say, I do know that I can't cure her, she will need a restorative potion. Severus if you would be so kind?"

"Unfortunately Headmaster we are currently out of mandrakes, I know professor Sprout has the second years working on some but they won't be usable for several months."

Filch wailed at this news. "Not to worry Argus, she is feeling no pain and no further harm will befall her, whilst it will be some time she will be restored to us soon." Dumbledore said.

Harry was dismissed and he went back to his dorm. The other boys pressed him for information, he told them what he knew except for the voice and the magic he had seen in the cat. They were enthralled, but none of them had known what the mysterious chamber was. They went to sleep, a new mystery now playing on Harry's mind. What was this Chamber of Secrets and who was the heir?


	10. Chapter 9 - Charms teeth and parties

Chapter 9

Harry had felt a bit put out by the way that he and Luna had left each other on Halloween so after giving her a couple of days to calm down he had sought her out in private. He had tried to explain calmly to her that sometime, like when you hear a strange voice shouting "rip tear kill," you need to drop what you're doing and go. Even if what you're doing is dancing with your extremely cute girlfriend.

She still hadn't taken this very well. She was calmer than before but thought that he was making up excuses and that if he wanted to leave, he didn't need to make up things to get away from her. Harry thoroughly confused had asked what she thought she was making up.

"If you don't know Harry then maybe we shouldn't be together."

Refusing to apologize for something he didn't know he done, Harry and Luna decided that maybe it was best if they didn't stay together. They agreed to stay friends but to steer clear for a few weeks to start with. Despite how unreasonable Harry thought Luna was being he kept quite calm and felt that the break up was amicable, not that he had much to compare it to.

He hadn't let the it get him down too much. His hormones had really started running wild over the last few weeks, not that he had done anything other than kiss with Luna, he didn't think they were old enough for that, but there were some really attractive girls at Hogwarts and since he had essentially been dating Luna from day one he hadn't really had much of a look before.

Sure he had had a good time with her. She was quirky and funny, not to mention cute, but she had been quite possessive and she had started to get on his nerves recently.

The news that they had broken up got all over the school very quickly, well the first and second years anyway, the seniors couldn't really care less about what two eleven year olds did even if one of them did happen to be The Boy Who Lived.

Harry suspected the portraits had something to do with the circulating rumors he had had a couple of them tell him various bits of gossip about some of the older students that he knew nothing about. He wasn't much of a gossip himself so he had said he would pass it on with no intention of doing so. However he resolved to remember that particular tidbit of information in case he ever needed to get a rumor spread quickly himself.

The response of the student body was different depending on who they were, Luna apparently had kept the Ravenclaws from getting angry at him which was nice of her, Harry thought, so there had been no outright animosity to deal with.

The boys whilst trying to put on an air of calm disinterest were peppering Harry with questions. He was apparently the first of the first years and among the first of the second years to actually have a girlfriend and convinced that now they weren't together that he'd give them all the juicy details, the boys had plugged him for all they were worth however all they got was a, "sorry gents, I don't kiss and tell."

This had of course led to questions such as "Oh so there was kissing, was there?" For his part Harry stuck to his guns and didn't talk about it anymore than this.

The girls however were something else, Harry was finding girls following him down corridors only to fly off when he caught their eye. His female housemates would find any excuse to sit next to him during meals or in the common room. Despite what looked to Harry, like quite a bit of room on their other side they always seemed to be shoulder to shoulder.

Harry was hardly oblivious to all this, he knew what they were thinking, quite literarily in fact as whenever he wasn't sure he'd take a look in their minds. However despite everyone's apparent intention to become the next Luna Lovegood, not a single one of them was prepared to make a move. Not really wanting another girlfriend, as such at the moment Harry left them to it and enjoyed the close contact when he could.

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The first Tuesday in November found the Hufflepuff first years in charms class. They had been quite excited for this particular lesson as unlike the other practical classes Professor Flitwick had held off on the practical aspect until now. So for the first time today the class would be starting to make objects fly.

Harry of course had already finished the first year syllabus himself, however he was looking forward to getting the chance to show off a bit. That being said he had found some of Flitwicks's lectures extremely interesting.

Apparently when a spell is crafted the crafter will set out the weave of the charm and match it to wand movements and an incantation. Then using a complicated ritual which they could apparently study in sixth and seventh year the spell would be put into the ether. Then any witch or wizard knowing the details of the charm could cast it.

The degree of difficulty of the charm is centered around four things; how much power was used in the initial ritual, the amount the charm has been cast since its inception, how much power the charm has in use and how complicated the weave of magic is. The first three determine the power needed by the witch or wizard and the third determines the concentration needed to cast the charm.

For this class they had a similar mentor system to their potions classes. Harry had been paired up with a second year called Hermione Granger along with Oscar and Jessica. Granger was an odd looking girl, buck-toothed with frizzy hair and without even needing to peek in her mind, Harry could tell, a real know it all.

After giving the class the instruction on how to use the charm with the incantation _wingardium leviosa _and the wand motion which was a swish and flick, the professor preformed the charm himself and sent a dozen feathers flying through the air to the various students.

After a couple of minutes observing Harry decided to do the charm himself, he had already perfected this one before he came to Hogwarts however there were some questions that he did want to ask Flitwick about.

Hermione had busied herself with Jessica and Oscar, going between correcting the tiniest of mistakes in their punctuation and forcibly moving their hands in the swish and flick pattern. Neither of them had actually had a chance to attempt to do the spell for themselves yet.

Harry moved his wand in a discreet pattern and murmured the incantation under his breath, he saw the tendrils of magic run through his hand into his wand which stemmed the flow, then magic from around the wood blended with his own creating a vortex like effect before erupting at the end, the spell far more powerful than the tiny amount of magic coming from his hand. The vortex then split up and formed a perfectly shaped net which picked up the feather and left it hovering.

Despite how easily it came to him and how used to it he had gotten over the last couple of months, Harry still couldn't get enough of magic, it really was just fascinating.

"Oh now see here everyone Mr. Potter has done it." The squeaky voice of the professor exclaimed. Very good 10 points to Hufflepuff.

Harry was unsurprised to see a look of anger on Granger's face, a quick look showed him that she had been the first to get the spell in her first class and she hadn't wanted anyone else to be as good as her. Shaking his head slightly at this immaturity Harry went back to his feather which was still floating in front of him.

He already knew the various limitations of this spell, movements of the wand and thoughts would cause the feather to move similar to a broomstick. His first thought had been to try and get himself to fly however that had backfired spectacularly no matter what he did the charm wouldn't hold him, sometimes he would get a foot in the air before being dropped unceremoniously on the floor, other times it wouldn't pick him up at all, it was most frustrating.

Deciding to inspect this now he cancelled the charm on the feather and cast it again in mid-air. Difficult to do however it helped being able to see the magic. Playing around a bit with the strands using his hand he noticed the same side effects that he had experienced when trying to lift himself, sometimes his hand would go straight through the strands other times they would hold for a bit and then give way.

"What are you doing? You're supposed to be practicing the charm!" The Granger girl screeched at him.

"I am, I'm trying to figure out why it can't be used to pick up a person."

"You can't use the hover charm to hover a person!" she snapped.

"Yes, I know that, if you recall that's what I just said, what I'm trying to do is figure out why."

Granger actually looked stumped at that one, "I guess it's because it's not how the spell is crafted." She actually looked almost upset at having to give an answer that she hadn't looked up in a book first. Talk about your parrot learners Harry thought.

"Hmm," pondered Harry mainly to himself, "so either the spell crafter wanted to lift objects exclusively and they forgot to include humans. Or they deliberately omitted it for some reason."

"Interesting deductions Mr Potter," said Flitwick who had come up behind them, "actually the second theory is correct, Madame Austeria Laagan decided to prevent the spell picking up any type of living organism due to the vast speed that the spell correctly wielded can propel the objects at. 'Great weavers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries' Chapter 5, Ms. Granger" he finished with a wink.

"So is there a charm that will lift a person?"

"_Mobilicorpus,_" said Granger immediatly, "It's a 3rd year charm, wand movement is a swoop and spiral."

"Do you mind if I practice on you?" Harry asked,

"Didn't you hear me it's a third year charm, it's too hard to compose the net in your mind to safely pick up a human."

"Do you mind if I practice on you?" Harry asked Jessica this time, who had been watching the conversation unfold with interest.

"Sure Harry," she said with a giggle. Choosing to ignore the giggle he pointed his wand and preformed the charm, Granger was right, it was hard to get the net to flow around the person properly however he'd been preforming pretty complicated magic for several years now with no wand to assist and he managed to get it just fine.

Jessica rose gently into the air and started to bob around a little with Harry's wand movements. Harry was choosing to ignore Granger who was now spouting random rules in between sputtering demands for Professor Flitwick to come over and, "do something about this!"

"My, My, My, that is remarkable for a first year student, take another 30 points for Hufflepuff" Professor Flitwick said with delight after coming over to Granger's calls, before admonishing her. "No Ms. Granger I don't believe there is any need to punish Mr. Potter for getting a charm right in charms class."

This hadn't done anything to cheer Granger up and with her constant hissing which was beginning to make her sound like a kettle, as far as Harry was concerned the bell which rang three minutes later couldn't have come soon enough.

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A couple of wet and miserable days later found Harry down at the quidditch locker rooms getting ready for training they were preparing for their first match of the year, it would be against Gryffindor who had already suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Slytherin.

Draco had gotten a spot on the Slytherin team as the seeker, he and the rest of the team had completely outclassed the Gryffindors, with the exception of their keeper Oliver Wood.

Ginny's brother Ron was the Gryffindor seeker and it was clear that he just wasn't up to the job, Draco had made him look like an idiot time and time again before swooping in to catch the snitch from right next to Ron's ear, for a 560 to 120 margin.

Harry's initial impressions about the snitch being unfairly weighted turned out not to be completely justified. It appeared that in the majority of matches the score margins were high enough that 150 points either way wouldn't necessarily decide the match. Also the school competition was played to a points system so it was actually the team with the highest overall winning margin at the end of the year that got the cup, not a finals system.

Today Cedric had asked them all to stick around before heading out considering the war the rain was waging on the land outside the whole Hufflepuff team had only been too eager to oblige.

"Right team, I've got some very interesting news, Professor Sprout has told me that the Gryffindor captain Oliver Wood has organized some professional quidditch scouts to come down and have a look at the game."

This drew some excited murmuring from the team.

"Now I don't know if you know, when the scouts come to these games they look at everyone playing not just the person who organized it so it's a great opportunity. Even if you've still got quite a few years of school left it's great to get noticed now as they'll remember when you're looking for a job. So with that in mind I want to see triple effort moving forward!"

Harry took Cedric to his word and went like a cut cat. He still hadn't given up his thoughts on fortune and grandeur and this was the first real opportunity to come up since arriving at Hogwarts. If quidditch was anything like muggle sports professionals got paid a lot. If this could be his ticket away from the Dursleys and the poor life for good well he'd go for it.

The next three practices flew by, Harry was flying like a madman. After a while the team had stopped getting worried when he got hit by a bludger or did something so risky on his broom that he narrowly missed falling a hundred and fifty feet to his death. It was just how Harry flew and quite frankly they loved him for it.

Throw a pass in his direction he'd get it, get in the open in front of goals, he'd get the quaffle to you, be on a bludgers war path while you were taking a shot, Harry would come in and take the hit for you. Not only was he brilliant skill wise, he was such a team player. The only thing that wasn't going great for Harry with quidditch was his broom.

He was still using one of the school ones, he simply couldn't afford to buy one himself and even if he could the first year rule prohibited it. As a result his flying suffered. Whilst the maneuverability of it was fine, the strait line speed and acceleration wasn't even half of his teammates brooms. None of them were on professional brooms either but the advancements made since the school brooms were purchased were incredible.

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"Professor Sprout, can I have a word please?"

"Of course Mr. Diggory, how can I help?"

"Well it's Harry Potter professor, you of course know that our big game is on Sunday?" Professor Sprout nodded, "well he still doesn't have his own broom, he's flying on the school ones and we're going to be at such a disadvantage."

"Well I can speak to Dumbledore about getting the first year rule bent a little, after all it's not every century that you have a first year playing on the house team but… He'll still have to buy it of course."

"That's just the thing professor," said Cedric running his hand through his hair nervously, "he can't afford it, there's no school fund or anything? Just for something slightly better like a Cleansweep 4 or a Comet 160? Anything other than those blasted Moonbeams?"

"Language Mr. Diggory," Sprout admonished, "unfortunately a broom is a luxury item and it's not something the school fund can cover for a single student. The Headmaster and the board will see it that way too I'm afraid." Sprout's face softened, "besides if what you tell me is true, Mr. Potter is good enough that it should present too much of a problem."

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Cedric had caught up with Harry at breakfast on Saturday before the match and told him about his conversation with Professor Sprout, Harry hadn't been surprised, brooms were expensive, even the cheap second hand ones cost nearly as much as a wand. He had reassured Cedric not to worry and that he'd still do the team proud on the school broom.

Cedric hadn't exactly looked reassured however he couldn't do more than he'd done so he left Harry to his coffee and toast.

Draco had also wanted a word to Harry that morning.

"Potter, Harry," Draco tried again shaking his head for calling Harry by his surname, "sorry about that Harry I haven't spoken to you much outside of potions and old habits die hard."

Harry waved off the apology. "What's up?"

"Well there's this party on in the Slytherin common room tonight, thought if you were interested…" He tailed off.

"Sure," said Harry, "someone's birthday or something? Do I need to bring anything?"

"It's one of the seniors, Marcus Flint, do you know him,"

"Big guy, your quidditch captain, not a bad chaser,"

"Yeah that's the one, anyway him and a couple of the other seniors are going to try and drink the whole night then rock up to your game tomorrow still drunk!" Draco said with a grin. "Obviously the rest of us won't be doing that but should still be a good night. You don't really have to bring anything, like no presents or wimpy stuff like that Flint would kill you. But if you could sneak in some booze or something it'd certainly earn you a bit of respect."

"Sounds great," Harry said, "I'll see you there."

"Oh and Draco,"

"Yeah?"

"Great catch the other week, that Roonil or whatever Weasly he is hasn't got anything on you,"

"Just call them all Weasly Harry," Draco said with a grin. "And cheers mate, I'll see you tonight! Dungeons are easy to find, the password is 'Pureblood.'"


	11. Chapter 10 Pipes, Pomps and bones

Chapter 10

Harry found himself in a very interesting position. He'd taken Draco's invitation to the party and attempted to do what he suggested and find some alcohol to bring along. Asking around discretely amongst the seniors and the portraits, from prior experience he'd discovered that this was the best way to achieve anything in Hogwarts, he'd found a large number of people willing to get it for him however no one who could before tonight.

Resolving to sort something out for future parties he'd racked his brain before coming up with a brilliant idea. Heading down to the lake he went to the place where he'd noticed that crop of suspicious herbs and using a biological recognition spell (a useful one that he'd picked up for potions) he confirmed that the herbs were indeed marijuana.

Harry hadn't actually had any experience smoking himself however he had a basic idea of the effects, a man who lived a couple of houses down the street from his aunt and uncle generally kept a decent crop growing, much to his Aunt's disgust. Harry had observed him from time to time and using his special abilities gotten a pretty good idea of the mental effects, not to mention the smell was rather… intoxicating, needless to say he'd been impressed.

During his time in the magical world however he hadn't picked up any references to the subject, not that it was strictly legal in the muggle world either but he thought he would have heard something if it was well known substance.

Deciding to take a risk he picked a decent bunch and used a drying charm on it then went off to the party with a nice big paper bag stuffed into his robes.

To say that it had gone down well was an understatement. The pureblooded wizards and witches certainly had been sceptical, Harry got the impression inhaling smoke in general was a bit of a foreign concept to wizards however they'd grown fond of the idea after a brief description of what the mysterious herbs did.

Harry had transfigured a bong from a quill which had drawn some appreciation from the onlookers, he could have just conjured it but he didn't want to give too much away about his magical prowess, and with much choking and spluttering he, around half the population of Slytherin and a couple of other more open minded students from other houses had made their way through the majority of the bag.

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So that's where Harry found himself. He was drunker than he'd ever been at Charles's house but it was nicely offset with the high he had, he was sitting on the couch in the common room but almost felt like he was floating a bit above it. The room had a very smoky appearance and everything bright appeared to be shining.

Conversation around him was a pleasant blur where he would insert an opinion or comment when required and let the rest flow without notice, it was strange he wasn't paying attention but he never seemed to miss a moment when he was required to speak.

Lounging under Harry's arm was a gorgeous second year Slytherin, Danni or Daphne or something her name was, Harry couldn't remember exactly and quite honestly he didn't care, during the pauses in conversation her and Harry found themselves running their hands across each other's bodies and engaging in long drawn out snogging sessions. Initially they'd gotten a few cat calls but in all honesty there were at least six other couples around the room doing exactly the same thing so they couldn't really care less.

Harry wasn't exactly sure how he'd gotten where he was, as more than half the party was just a massive blur but by this point he couldn't care less.

He was drawn out of a long and aimless conversation with a Slytherin quidditch player called Derrick, which he thought had something to do with the colour of a quaffle, by the grandfather clock donging half past two. This was the first time Harry could remember in a very long time that he was actually surprised at the time, figuring it was the drugs he didn't dwell too much on it.

Shaking his head slightly he bent down to sneak another kiss off the girl under his arm, whose name he had now actually forgotten, when he realised that she had fallen asleep.

Slightly disappointed, however, like everything else at the moment more than happy to let it wash over him, he also randomly realised that he was hungry. He got to his feet and staggered outside saying goodbye to a few people on the way.

He started walking aimlessly with no other intention than finding food. After about ten minutes he thought that rather than just hoping to come across food perhaps he should seek out the kitchens.

Giggling slightly to himself for some reason he employed the tactics he'd used earlier and started asking portraits. After getting a few odd looks and some long drawn out conversations that he couldn't remember even if you put a wand to his head, he eventually found himself nearly at his common room in-front of a picture of a bowl of fruit.

Reaching his finger out, almost a hundred percent sure that the stupid suit of armour was having him on, but in too good a mood to care, he tickled the pear. To his astonishment it started to squirm and giggle before the picture came off the wall revealing an opening.

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Harry wasn't exactly surprised, he was far too mellowed out to be surprised by anything at the moment. But he had just had one of the most interesting midnight snacks of his life.

He'd snuck into the kitchens expecting to have to creep around to steal a bit of uncooked food, not to be cooked a four course banquet by a team of seven or eight house elves. Although once he'd found the little creatures he'd remembered Hagrid's words from earlier in the year about the amount of the them living in the castle.

He'd had an interesting meal with the elves. It must have lasted for a couple of hours chatting about their lives at Hogwarts and beforehand. Apparently the majority of the elves there were second hand after being owned by families which couldn't keep them for various reasons.

Harry couldn't really remember exactly that they spoke about, but it had been interesting and for some reason he certainly felt like he understood them a bit more. They were very happy to answer his questions about themselves and the castle in general. Locking this away as another good source of information (not to mention food) he'd begged his apologies and went to bed after realising what time it was.

He woke the next morning at his normal hour but couldn't bring himself to get out of bed. He had a pounding headache, it felt like any small movement would cause him to projectile vomit over his bed sheets and his mouth tasted like an ashtray.

After a couple of hours lying in bed trying to avoid any movement whatsoever he heard the other boys in his dorm start to get up. Forcing his addled brain to think he wondered why they were getting up so early, it was a Saturday and…. He tried again, it was a Saturday and… why were they getting up on a Saturday?

Oh yeah there was a quidditch game on… that he was playing in!

Rolling out of bed, suddenly very awake but no less sick he groaned out a good morning to the other boys and threw some clothes on.

Still in a bit of a daze he came down to the great hall and sat down. Swallowing occasionally to ward off the vomit he chanced a look at the clock and breathed a sigh of relief he still had just under two hours before he was expected to be ready.

Foregoing his usual healthy breakfast he helped himself to an enormous serve of buttered toast and bacon all washed down with about four cups of coffee.

Contrary to everything he'd read about hangovers this didn't really help. Anxious not to run across his teammates before the game he made his way slowly down to the quidditch pitch with the intention of sitting in the change rooms until it started.

A few people called out cheerful greetings and wishes of good luck on the way down which he acknowledged with a bowed head and a raised hand. This caused some guffawing at the Slytherin table as he walked past as they knew exactly how he was feeling.

The walk did nothing to calm Harry's stomach and before he made it to the change rooms had to stop off behind a tree to throw up. It was horrible the alcohol burnt more coming up than the cheap whiskey he had been drinking last night did going down.

The upshot to all of that was that for some reason throwing up did seem to do what the grease for breakfast couldn't and did ease the hangover a bit although by the time the rest of the team came down to get changed Harry was once again feeling miserable, sitting in the corner wishing someone could just kill him and be done with it.

"Hi Harry…Oh are you alright?"

Harry looked up groggily, Cedric had just walked in and was looking at him in concern, quickly pushing the hangover away and putting a hopefully bright expression on his face he said, "yeah fine, just had a bad night sleep."

"Well I hope you're good for today's game!"

"You better believe it," Harry said with a grin which was about as superficial as possible, he followed it up with a quick probe of Cedric's thoughts from which he surmised that the elder boy had bought his cock and bull.

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"Come on Rich, hurry up the games going to be starting any second now"

"It's a Hogwarts game Jamie, are you really expecting much?"

"You never know, sometimes these kids put on a fair show." Richard Jilks, better known as Rich shook his head. If he was honest his co-worker Jamie Derich was right, sometimes these games did really have some kids with potential, Charlie Weasley came to mind not that he'd actually signed him, but in his nine years of scouting he'd learnt not to get his hopes up.

The two mean climbed the seemingly numerous flights of stairs to get up to the bleachers. This was another thing that Rich hated about scouting at schools was the stairs, give him the portals of the professional grounds any day.

They finally settled themselves into their chairs in the teachers box just as the last of the Hufflepuff team was announced.

"'...eeker Cedric Diggory"

"Oh I hear that he's mean to be alright," Jamie said scribbling on his notepad, Rich just grunted and watched the action on field.

The referee released the bludgers and snitch, before throwing the quaffle in the air and the game was on. The commentator was going on a bit however he seemed to know the names of the players which helped both of the scouts given their late appearance. Not to mention some of his comments were actually quite funny if slightly biased towards the Gryffindor team.

The game was actually quite entertaining, as far as school games go the chasers seemed to be on a reasonable even footing initially with a couple of goals back and forth before the Hufflepuffs started to get the better of them.

"And Potter feints left then right, Oh and I don't believe it in the end he just lobbed it through the middle."

"Hey Jamie,"

"Mmmm?"

"Is that Harry Potter? As in the Harry Potter,"

"Yeah didn't you hear about that?"

"I tend not to put too much stock in rumours," Rich said with a grin, that being said the young Potter had certainly caught his attention with that last goal.

As the game wore on a bit it became apparent that Potter, despite his inexperience was clearly the better player out there. He was forever at the ball, or putting passes to his teammates in perfect position. He did however seem to be hampered by his broom, whilst his flying style was impeccable and his commitment was absolute, it was clear on the long strait runs that his broom was severely hampering him.

Rich and Jamie watched as Potter incredibly dragged more and more speed out of the obviously inferior broom actually catching up to one of the Gryiffindor chasers, Johnson if he remembered correctly, and pull off a spectacular steal before turning around and heading down towards his goal.

About halfway down the pitch however, as Rich had expected, the broom started to let out a trail of smoke and lose altitude. Potter realising something was amiss tossed a pass up towards his teammate Preece who made a decent attempt on the goal which was saved by the Gryffindor keeper; Wood.

Diggory noticing that his chaser was going down signalled a timeout to the referee. Potter ducked inside the change room and came out with what looked like an equally crap but different broom, Diggory appeared to telling him to take it a bit easier.

After a couple of minutes they were back in the air and Hufflepuff continued to dominate albeit with a slightly slower Potter.

"Potters steaming down the pitch as quick as his school broom will take him he's one on one with Wood who's coming out to meet him, oooh Potters dropped his shoulder and done a bumping roll dodge and put the ball cleanly through the left hoop. I think Potter might have broken his arm there and Hufflepuff don't have another time out."

Sure enough Potter was holding his right arm close to his body in obvious pain but he didn't show any signs of letting up, flying with his knees and throwing and catching with his left hand he continued to have almost as much of an impact as before.

"You've got to give it to the kid he's certainly got guts!" Jamie said, with a sideways look, Rich for his part nodded appreciatively whilst Potter wasn't the most technically skilled player yet, not to say that he was bad, but his sheer commitment despite his injury was simply astounding. At this point Hufflepuff were 140 points up and barring a miracle it didn't look like Gryffindor had a chance.

"It looks like Gryffindor's seeker Ron Weasley has seen the snitch," The commentator exclaimed excitedly, "Diggory's miles away and won't have a chance, he's closing in and he's… ouch surely that's a foul"

Potter steering only with his knees had intercepted the seeker and smashed into him, in the confusion the snitch had disappeared. The referee blew her whistle and awarded a penalty to Bell which she promptly threw right into the hands of Fleet.

Fleet tossed the ball to Applebee who threw to Preece, Preece stormed down the field before lobbing the ball to Potter again one on one with Wood, one of the identical twin beaters on the Gryffindor team slapped a bludger towards him and it caught him on his broken arm, wincing in pain but still managing to keep control of the ball Potter maneuverer towards goal.

The crowd however wasn't watching this. Their eyes were once again on the Gryffindor seeker who was diving at the snitch which had unbelievably appeared right below him for the second time in the match, Diggory whilst trying was once again miles out of position.

"God that snitch has it in for Diggory," said Rich, "He's clearly the better seeker but not very lucky!"

Potter rolled around Wood and threw towards the right hand goal.

Weasley dived hand outstretched.

Wood reached out to save the goal, the quaffle touched his fingers and deflected into the edge of the hoop before falling through for a goal just half a second before Weasley caught the snitch. Making the score dead even at 190 apiece.

The referee blew her whistle and the Hufflepuffs started to go down for the break before extra time.

"Gryffindor win 190 to 180 the commentator was screaming,"

"Hold on a second," Rich said, that goal of Potters should have evened the score.

"The ref didn't see it, she was too focused on the seeker," Jamie said.

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The ground was in pandemonium; the Gryffindors were celebrating wildly whilst the Hufflepuffs led by Cedric were complaining profusely to Madame Hooch the referee over the injustice of the outcome.

Unfortunately as she had already told them a number of times, she didn't have a live action replay and she had to call the game how she saw it. Needless to say this didn't exactly have the calming effect that she hoped.

Harry was livid, he estimated that he had at least two separate breaks in his arm yet despite this had completely dominated and should have won them the match, but just because the stupid ref couldn't drag her eyes away from the bloody seeker, they'd lost.

Eventually the Hufflepuffs had given up trying to convince her otherwise and Harry had begun the trek back to the school to get his aching arm fixed up. His teammates in all the action and excitement hadn't noticed the extent of his injuries.

"Mr Potter?" a voice called out to him. Harry turned around to see two men hurrying after him, one was a portly man, the other quite tall and they were both wearing what Harry could only describe as the Wizarding equivalent of a business suit.

"Fantastic game, Mr Potter," the portly man said, "Richard Jilks, but you can call me Rich," Harry grimaced and awkwardly reached over to shake the man's hand with his left. "And this is my associate Jamie Derich,"

"Pleasure," Harry said, "how can I help you gentlemen?"

"I'm sure your captain might have mentioned us Mr Potter, we're the scouts that Mr Wood organised, we're affiliated with the national quididitch league however we also look out for the national squad."

"Okay," Harry said slowly wondering where this was going.

"Mr Wood impressed us quite a bit however nowhere near as much as yourself," said Rich pausing to let this sink in, "now unfortunately the league has an age limit on players, that is players must reach majority within their first year of competition however no such restriction exists for the national team."

Harry was slightly dumbstruck, he was only eleven, he knew he was good but this was something else. The man called Jamie had carried on with the explanation.

"Now the World Cup is just under two years away and the first qualifying round will be around the end of this school year so we're leaving this quite late. However we believe you'd be an outstanding addition to the team."

"I don't know what to say"

"Well that's alright, your tryouts will be on Saturday three weeks from now, we'll send you all the details in a couple of days, we'd love to see you there. If you're successful you're contract will be worked out on the day."

The two men bid their farewell and commiserations on the unjustly lost game and left a bewildered Harry standing in their wake.

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Harry lay in the hospital wing barely believing what had transpired today, within a month he could be a part of the English international quidditch team on his way to the World Cup. This was the chance he had been hoping for to see the end of his money troubles, admittedly it had come in a most unexpected form and far sooner than he thought however Harry had always been a big believer in not putting all your eggs in one basket, after all, it was the main reason he had tried out for the team to begin with.

He was drawn out of his musings by the dull ache in his arm. He had run into Professor Lockhart on the way up who had noticed his injury (unlike nearly everyone else). He had informed Harry with the breaks that bad the bones would need to be vanished and regrown overnight. Harry had let him do it there as it would take the pain away whilst he journeyed to the hospital wing.

Initially Madame Pomfrey, the school nurse, had been furious at Lockhart however after explaining the nature of the injury she had understood his reasoning and given him the potion which would regrow his bones. It came in a skull shaped bottle and tasted horrible however as usual Harry grinned and bore it, and received a smile for his trouble.

Later that night as he was still lying awake in the bed due to the pain, apparently taking any pain medication or potions with the Skele-grow made it useless, he heard a rustling of curtains. Peeking through the gap in his curtains he saw Professors Mcgonagall and Dumbledore levitating frozen boy into the opposite bed.

As they moved Harry got a better look and recognised the boy as Colin Creevy, a Gryffindor in his year. He appeared to have the same affliction as Filch's cat as he appeared to be frozen solid a camera gripped against his face.

Dumbledore pried the camera away from his face "I wonder if he managed to take a picture of his assailant," he said and he reached to open the case.

"Stop!" Harry yelled, all thoughts of remaining incognito removed from his head, "If you open the back you won't be able to develop the picture," he continued marvelling at the stupidity of people in a crisis.

Dumbledore pulled his hand back as though burned, whether this was by the stupidity of his actions or that he hadn't realised that they were being watched was unknown to Harry however he didn't care.

"Mr Potter I didn't see you there, of course you are correct, I don't know what came over me," he handed the camera to a third hand that Harry hadn't realised was there, "I trust you have the required potions Severus?"

"Of course Headmaster," came the voice of his potions master followed by swift footsteps.

"Perhaps we should continue this conversation outside," Dumbledore said to Professor Mcgonagall then turning to Harry, "commiserations on your loss Mr Potter and thank you for your swift thinking."

Harry slumped back into the hospital bed and finally let the sandman take him.


	12. Chapter 11 How now?

Chapter 11

Christmas and New Year at Hogwarts came and went with little fanfare for Harry, he was one of only a few students staying in the castle for the holidays as the other students (and teachers for that matter) were becoming increasingly spooked because of the petrifications

Since his visit to the hospital wing there had been a number of other attacks all against muggleborns two second year Gryffindors; that annoying Granger girl and a boy called Dean Thomas and also a Ravenclaw prefect Penelope Clearwater. Luckily no one from Harry's house had been attacked yet but from the rumours everyone was sure it was only a matter of time.

That's not to say that Harry wasn't a bit scared himself however he didn't exactly have any other options. He could of course have gone home to the Dursleys' however he felt more comfortable taking on the monster in the chamber than facing his uncle after not being there to do chores for three months.

He had received some cursory gifts from his dorm mates and Draco to which he had responded in kind. Having Hedwig made this easy as one of the older students told him how to use the owl order system.

The one interesting thing that had happened was that he had received a cloak, not just any cloak this one made you invisible. Oddly the person who sent it didn't name themselves only saying that it once belonged to his father and to use it well.

Harry hadn't noticed any trace of magic on the parchment so he couldn't attempt to match the signature to anyone in Hogwarts but he had his suspicions pinned quite closely on Dumbledore. From what he gathered the man seemed the type.

He hadn't used the cloak for anything particularly interesting however it had certainly made his nighttime adventures, when he had them, a lot easier.

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On the day that the other students arrived back in the castle they found an interesting notice on the board in the common room. There was to be a dueling club starting that night requesting that all those who wished to participate should put their name down. Harry whilst he had been advancing miles ahead of his peers, hadn't actually had a chance to have a magical duel with anyone and was all for the opportunity.

That night after dinner found the majority of the school standing in the Great Hall, the tables had all been moved to the side and a large platform was placed in the middle. Harry was idly chatting to Eldric who was telling him how scared he was of the monster when Lockhart came into the room and took the stage.

"Welcome, welcome," he said smiling broadly, "can you all see me? Can you all hear me?"

There were various mutterings of agreement.

"Excellent, excellent, again welcome to the first dueling club to be held at Hogwarts in 179 years. May it teach you to defend yourselves as I have had to on numerous occasions, for full details see my published works." There was scattered applause, "Now let me introduce my assistant who I am told from very reputable sources is an excellent dueler himself, Professor Severus Snape!"

Snape stepped onto the platform, jerkily raising his hand to the faint applause which was coming mainly from the Slytherin section, although Harry too was clapping politely as he had done for Lockhart.

"Now," continued Lockhart, "let's begin with a demonstration." He and Snape walked to opposite ends of the platform and stood with their legs apart and their wands raised high. "You can see that we are both standing in a formal dueling stance. Now we bow"

Snape jerked his head, whilst Lockhart bowed gracefully with much twirling of hands,

"The referee counts to three and on the count of three we may cast our first spells, if you would do the honours, Ms. Bullstrode." He continued looking at a Slytherin second year.

"One, two, three!"

As the girl reached three, Lockhart yelled _protego _at the same time that Snape called _expelliarmous _a beam of red light barreled out of the end of Snape's wand and crashed into the blue hemisphere which had formed around Lockhart, shattering it and then crashing into him throwing him off the platform and into the wall.

He got up looking rather shaky. "Yes, yes, excellent demonstration Professor," he said bowing to Professor Snape, then threatening to fall over from the action, before addressing the students, "That was the disarming charm, as you can see I've lost my wand, ah yes thank you Ms. Brown. The spell I cast was a shield charm intended to block minor spells and as you can see if enough effort is put into a spell it can shatter it." He gave Snape a little dirty look as he said this.

"Anyway enough demonstrating let's pair you up and have you practicing, disarming and shielding only."

Harry was paired up with Eldric and they traded spells for a bit, Harry had long mastered both these spells and wasn't really paying much attention, he gave Eldric a couple of pointers here and there but for the most part was wondering why he'd bothered showing up.

He must have really been daydreaming because people were shoving him up to the platform, "wait what's going on?" He asked Eldric.

"Weren't you listening? You're going to be doing a demonstration duel with Weasley."

Harry hadn't actually noticed Ginny in the room but a quick look up told him that it was going to be a different Weasley that he'd be dueling. He vaguely recognized him from around about, Lon or Bon or some stupid name, he didn't know why they were pairing him against a second year but from the blank expression on the kids face and the dribble of food down his shirt he didn't think it'd be much of an issue.

He was right, Lockhart had started the duel after another stern warning of disarming and shields only (apparently a few of the older students had gotten a little silly with the hexing) straight away Ron (as his name turned out to be) let loose with what looked like an itching hex.

Shaking his head a little at how sad it was to cheat in a demonstration match to beat a first year Harry sidestepped and disarmed Weasley.

"You're a cheat."

Rolling his eyes at the stupidity of the statement Harry decided not to mention that it wasn't him who was using different spells, instead he said simply, "alright let's go again."

They lined up, bowed, Snape this time counted to three and Harry promptly disarmed Ron before he could cast a spell.

"Come on you dirty cheat, best out of three."

"Weasley you idiot, I've just won two therefore I've already won best of three," this kid was really something, Harry thought he saw him start to tear up, his face was certainly getting red.

"You're just a stinking cheat Potter, you're a filthy dark wizard, you're a…"

"That's quite enough," said Snape waving his wand at Weasley causing him to immediately become silent, "Mr. Longbottom please take Mr. Weasley to the hospital wing and get him a calming draught. Mr. Malfoy, why don't you come up and have a go with Mr. Potter."

Harry shook his head a bit at the antics of Weasley before grinning, Draco should make for a far better opponent than that freckled idiot. He still couldn't quite figure out why they were pinning him against second years, sure he knew more than enough but they weren't supposed to know that. In the end he figured that it was an oversight and since Weasley was a pushover and Draco was his friend he didn't think too much on it.

As Draco got to the other end of the dueling area Lockhart bent over and asked "do you need any pointers Harry?"

"No thank you professor," Harry could see Snape whispering something in Draco's ear who was growing a positively evil smirk. Harry chuckled and shook his head.

"Scared Harry?" Draco asked,

"Quaking in my piss filled boots." They both laughed.

"Right gentlemen on three, one, two, three."

Noticing there hadn't been any cautions this time about the use of other spells Harry threw a leg-locker curse at Draco, who dodged skillfully before shouting out "_serpensortia,_" causing a rather large black snake to erupt from the end of his wand.

As the snake slithered down between the duelers muttering about something or other (certainly not anything important,) Harry sighed, obviously this was what had Draco so worked up earlier, honestly, he'd been expecting something a little better from the blonde haired boy.

"Don't move Potter I'll take care of it for you," Snape announced who had obviously interpreted his sigh as a moan of terror, or something, as he brandished his wand at the snake but didn't actually cast a spell.

The snake slithered towards Harry with the proclamation of "mmm tasty," causing Harry to sigh again, snakes really were terrible conversationalists. It's advancements on him were however drawing screams from the rest of the students that were there.

When it was with about a meter away Harry had had enough, drawing himself up to emphasize his size he sternly told the snake to "_fusssck offs." _Oh shit, he thought, he really hadn't meant to speak parsletounge, he had seen the stigma attached to it mentioned in some book or other and hadn't meant to reveal the ability. Luck however appeared to be on his side, a quick look around revealed that with all the screaming no one had heard him say it.

Inwardly he sighed in relief before raising his wand with the intention of vanishing the snake, who was looking around for a less scary meal, before it vanished with a puff of smoke courtesy of Professor Snape who had apparently finally decided to act. "I think," said Snape, "Mr. Malfoy has won," personally Harry thought this was bullshit but he couldn't be bothered arguing over something this petty.

He walked off the stage and went to congratulate Draco. Apparently he was wrong about no one hearing the parseltounge as Draco looked at him shrewdly and said "Ssssssssso?" Deliberately lengthening the 'S.'

"We'll talk later," he replied simply.

The rest of the dueling club passed without much issue, Harry wasn't worried about Draco keeping his secret the older boy seemed trustworthy. Before long the meeting was over and it was time to head to bed. On his way out of the great hall Draco caught up with Harry.

"So a parselmouth?"

"Yeah, it's actually not that interesting, snakes are so boring."

"Huh, yeah I can imagine, still I'm sure you don't want this getting around the school?"

Harry looked at Draco askance "Surely the noble Master Malfoy would be above mere gossip?"

"Of course, if you make it worth my while," he said with a grin

"What do you want?"

"How about a favor later?"

Harry thought for a bit, "Hmm ok, but nothing too outlandish, I don't want to end up marrying your sister or something."

Draco laughed, "Don't worry I don't have a sister and it won't be too big, but…" he appraised Harry with a mock snooty look, "How do I know that you won't welch out of it?"

"Please, do I look like a welcher, do you want me to sign a magically binding contract or something?"

Draco laughed, "Of course I trust you not to welch, but… The contract sounds interesting."

"Really? That exists? I was kind of joking."

"Yeah they do, I've always wanted to make one actually but my Father wouldn't let me."

"What happens if you break it, do you die or something?"

"Well… you can, but you stipulate the terms it, why do you want to do it?"

Harry thought for a moment, "Well I dunno it sounds fun, kind of dangerous and all that." He grinned.

Draco grinned back, "Well let's meet up later, I'll be in touc…." He was interrupted by a booming voice echoing around the corridors;

"Students return to your dormitories immediately, all staff report to the staff wing, I repeat students return to your dormitories immediately, all staff report to the staff wing!"

"Huh," Harry said, "what do you think that's about?"

"I don't know do you think it's abo…" Draco was interrupted for the second time in a minute this time by a swarm of students which seemed to magically pull Draco down to the dungeons and Harry off to the kitchens"

"See you later," Harry yelled over the din, he thought that he heard a reply but he wasn't sure.

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Harry lay on his bed thinking. After much panic and questioning of other students who were clearly right next to the students doing the questioning and therefore couldn't know the answers to the questions that were being asked, all of which had amused Harry greatly, Professor Sprout had finally come in and told them the reason for the earlier announcement.

As per many of the students' guesses it was indeed another attack which had caused the issue however this one was allegedly a little more interesting than the others. That is if you could call people getting turned into stone boring, it kind of was actually Harry lamented, the same attacks had been happening over and over again it was almost nice for a little bit of a mix up.

Justin Finch Fletchey a second year who Harry had met on occasion around the dorms had gotten petrified, nothing unusual there, well, more unusual than normal. What was strange was his companion, Sir Nicholas was apparently with him at the time and was petrified as well, Harry had spoken to Nicholas several times since the party and despite his terrible speech giving skills Harry quite liked the jolly ghost.

This being said no one who had been petrified appeared overly damaged and Harry was having a bit of trouble feeling too sorry for the incapacitation of someone who was meant to have been dead for 500 years already. It was all very curious though.

Despite all this going on it really wasn't the major thing that was troubling Harry at the moment, Sprout had informed everyone that due to this latest attack the staff had decided that it would be safest if all future quidditch matches were cancelled and that students were not to leave their dorm rooms without an escort.

Whilst this would wreak havoc with Harry's nighttime wanderings it wasn't completely restricting now that he had the invisibility cloak. What was an issue was the upcoming quidditch trials.

With Christmas and New Year come and gone they were almost upon him, in fact, this Saturday! With everything else going on he hadn't given the matter much thought, obviously he'd been training however that had been more background noise rather than for anything in particular.

However with these tight new restrictions he doubted that he'd be allowed to leave the castle unescorted and Jamie had told him no unauthorized parties were allowed to the tryouts. He had only five days, he needed a backup plan and he needed it now!

Rolling out of bed Harry surreptitiously looked around to check no one else had come into the dorm then he reached into the deepest part of his trunk and withdrew the invisibility cloak. Wrapping it around himself he snuck out past the terrified crowd and began to make his way up to the library.


	13. Chapter 12 Heads and Arms

"Crap," Harry muttered to himself in frustration. He had made his way to the library easily enough dodging past the few teachers that were on patrol. But once he got there it had been futile. He just didn't know where to start. He had spent a couple of hours sitting at one of the desks navel gazing (which was more like chair gazing considering he was invisible and looking straight through himself) but not coming up with any brilliant ideas.

He was positive that Dumbledore wouldn't let him leave to go to the tryouts and he needed a backup plan but what? How was he going to make his way out of the castle undetected?

Then it hit him, this was a castle, castles had secret passages didn't they? Surely this one would be no different and even if the teachers knew about the passages with his cloak he'd be able to sneak into one to get out of the castle and if there were enchantments he'd be able to see them.

He jumped up and rushed (quietly) over to the history section, a quick flick through the index cards pointed him in the right direction, he wandered down the aisle, slowing when he approached the section and started letting his fingers do the wandering along the spines of the books.

Five minutes later had him back at the desk with a positively ancient series of books, which upon closer inspection were more like files as all the pages came out and unfolded, several of these were unfolded in front of Harry who was pouring over them in wonder and bemusement that they would allow students access to the original blueprints of Hogwarts.

The secret passageways that he was looking for weren't marked on the prints, but he'd never been expecting that, what he had been expecting were clues and he wasn't disappointed.

He'd done some reading on architecture and design as a part of doing some home repairs around the Dursleys' after one or more of Dudley's tantrums had caused holes in the walls and other damage.

There is rarely unused space in buildings, walls are the thickness they need to be and that's all, there are no square walls or walls a meter and a half thick. If there are there's something that hasn't been mentioned (or the architect was the worst Harry had ever heard of). Hogwarts had plenty of these anomalies.

Several Harry recognized as "secret" passageways that he and the other students used to get to class's, all common knowledge now, a few others seemed to connect very random areas of the castle which Harry resolved to check out another time. But there were several that didn't appear to have any connections and these were the ones that Harry was interested in.

Grabbing a pen, ink and some parchment he made some notes about his discoveries and started to draw a little map putting the secret passageways in where he thought they'd be, however to his surprise he couldn't.

No matter how hard he tried he couldn't draw in lines indicating what he was positive was there. The pen would jump around on the parchment doodling smiley faces, flowers and even what he thought was Mt. Fuji in Japan.

He looked at the pen and parchment, no magic traces, nothing on the ink or maps either. He tried drawing again, there! Every time that he put his quill to the parchment there was a little spark of magic redirecting the pen, it seemed to be coming from the castle.

Harry thought for a bit, there must be some enchantment on the passageways which prevents them being located directly on a map, that was some impressive magic for sure, however for his purposes he didn't actually need to draw the passages. He copied the blueprints directly then folded them back up and put everything away. He then left the library for the second floor to where he thought there was a staircase just over the entrance hall.

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Harry almost yelled in frustration, all of his assumptions had been correct (aside from one where he thought there was a stair case but it actually turned out to be a cleaning cupboard, completely devoid of teenagers, which Harry was surprised at) but none of the passages had led out of the castle grounds.

The had led out of the castle sure, the time was now approaching 4:00am and Harry had been to the quidditch locker rooms (this one he took note of as it was far quicker than walking down the grounds), Hagrid's hut, the greenhouses, just inside the front gate and back to the greenhouses again.

He was on the fourth floor now going for the last one that he had made a note of, there were others but he'd wanted to get searching rather than find every single passage on the prints.

After standing still for a minute or so whilst professor Flitwick went past with the Bloody Baron, Harry continued down the corridor that he was on, after checking his "map" again he stopped in front of a large mirror, looking at himself, or rather where he should be, he noted how eerie it was that he couldn't see himself. As in nothing, no faint traces of magic swirling around him, nothing, it was as though the cloak wiped his existence from the face of the earth.

He walked around both sides of the mirror inspecting it, poking and prodding. That was the other frustrating thing, the passages were rarely obvious there was normally something that had to be poked in order to get through which had already made his search far longer than he thought it would be.

After a couple of minutes with no success he checked both ends of the corridor for teachers and ghosts and lowered his hood. He figured that since this was a mirror maybe it had to see you, whilst staring at his disembodied head a gust of wind blew down the corridor ruffling his hair and to Harry's surprise causing ripples on the surface of the mirror, walking forward he put his hand up to touch it.

The surface felt like pleasantly cool water and his hand passed right through, pushing forward he stepped over the frame and through what was previously a solid pane of glass to find himself in a stone corridor.

"You have got to be kidding me!" The whole thing was caved in, there was a pile of stone and rocks sealing off all but about ten meters of the passage. Feeling like this really wasn't his night Harry pulled his wand out and started moving stuff.

After a good hour of lifting, moving and general repair work he had carved a small hole through the cave in, he'd reinforced it as best he could and he was hoping beyond hope that this one actually led out of this bloody castle.

After crawling through the hole, he started walking there was nothing to see, the passage appeared to go down which was encouraging but it was entirely stone and went on as far as he could see by the light of his wand.

By the time he'd been walking for twenty minutes he was sure that he was onto a winner, none of the others had been this long and he pressed on with a renewed sense of vigor.

Finally after another ten or fifteen minutes this time walking upwards he came to a trapdoor, listening carefully for anyone or anything outside he pressed it open and came out in the middle of a train platform.

Being the wee hours of the morning the entire landscape was bathed in a beautiful orange pink glow, he looked around recognizing the place, he was after all here last only about three months ago, it was the Hogsmeade train station. This was perfect, from here he was sure that he could get Jamie or Rich to pick him up or send someone else to.

Elated, despite his lack of sleep, Harry positively jogged back down the passage, intent on only one thing, bed. His plan was a success, he could get out of the castle, giggling slightly to himself the whole way he scurried back to his dorm and tucked himself into bed for a good half hours sleep before class.

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The following night found Harry back in the library. The day had been positively torturous with his lack of sleep from the night before, he had caught a few hours early in the evening by skipping dinner and then had gotten up again for further research.

He figured that getting out of the castle was great but upon reflection it would be better if he didn't have to rely on someone from the squad to pick him up. So he was looking for means of magical transportation, he assumed that there were some but just wasn't sure on the details.

He was right, there was an entire shelf dedicated to the topic, most of it rehashed the same information however it was readily apparent that witches and wizards alike were fond of getting places fast.

The topics that kept getting mentioned were broomstick travel; he figured he'd be doing enough flying for the day. Floo travel which sounded very odd, apparently you tossed some powder onto a fire gave the name of a destination and it rushed you through the chimney and shot you out at the other fireplace, this did actually sound promising however he wasn't sure that he'd be able to access a fireplace in Hogsmeade or that there'd be one at the venue.

Portkeys too sounded interesting, they were a lower level enchanted item which when touched, at a certain time or at a password; would transport the user through the ether to a predetermined destination. They were however extremely complicated magic and there were even cautions in the books indicating that there was no way to tell before using them whether they would function correctly. Best case scenario for a failure would be the device immediately returning the user back to the original location upon touching it again (like a spring bouncing back) worst case would be the user being stuck in the ether until pulled back by an experienced mage. Apparently once someone had created one correctly once it was easy enough however it certainly was something for which a tutor was needed and shouldn't be learnt from a book.

There were also some obscure references to something called fire travel in which a phoenix would carry a person to a destination almost instantaneously (Harry wasn't sure if this was fact or fiction) and magic carpet travel which sounded a little too "Aladin-y" for his tastes and besides had been illegal for half a century.

The one method which had sparked his interest was apparition. Or dissapparition it was kind of odd how the books used the words, they were almost interchangeable but not quite. Harry assumed one meant disappearing and the other appearing but there were references to apperating away from somewhere but nothing about dissapparating to somewhere, still, a rose by any other name and all that.

Anyway, it was an entirely wandless discipline which could apparently only be done by those over the age of seventeen, well that was the legal requirement. The process basically involved vanishing yourself and then re-conjuring yourself in another location. It had to be either somewhere you'd been before, somewhere you had an image in your head of, from a picture or something, or had the coordinates of.

Harry had been experimenting with vanishing and conjuring wandlessly for years so it wasn't exactly new to him, applying the method to himself however, was a new theory though.

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"Hmm, that's interesting," Harry muttered to himself examining his left arm, his disembodied left arm that is. He'd found the process of apparition was quite simple for him however he was having issues getting his entire body to leave and appear in the same space and had kept dropping body parts all over his test location which of course was the Hogsmeade train station once again in the wee hours of the morning.

Despite sounding like it, with the body parts dropping off and all, the station didn't look like a serial murderers basement as all the limbs and appendages were sealed perfectly with skin and there was in-fact no blood at all, or pain for that matter which was a nice change for Harry.

He had read this was often a problem and knew the countermeasure for it was to stand right next to the body part and apparate yourself and it on the spot. Well, he'd deduced this, the book actually said that the trainer is to vanish and conjure both the body part and the person back together however since that's what apparating was he figured that he could just do that. This was perhaps a risky move to try on your own but it worked, Harry sometimes had very little self preservation.

The loss of body parts (or splinching as the book called it) was however quite annoying as he'd been trying for a while now and had only managed to get it correctly a couple of times. What had garnered his attention this time was that he'd noticed that he could still move the fingers on the arm that had come off, and his elbow and hand for that matter.

Intrigued he moved it a few meters away and tried again, the limb still moved he could also feel the pavement against the arm. Deciding to experiment further with this later he picked up the arm again and quickly popped himself out and back into existence. Checked that he'd put the arm on the correct way and made to try again.

Thinking carefully about what he'd done when he'd actually gotten it to work, he imagined the spot where he wanted to go, it was behind him as the book had said trying to go somewhere that you could see was a crutch, he imagined himself disappearing and reappearing in that spot, he released his tendrils of magic to completely surround him and finally this time unlike most of the others just before giving the final push quickly ran the image of his whole body disappearing and reappearing perfectly through his mind and then CRACK!

He was down the other end of the platform. Elated he checked himself for missing body parts and after finding none turned his back on the other end of the platform and tried again.

Another two hours later Harry was feeling exhausted, he'd drilled himself over and over again until he could appear on a knut on the ground within a half a second. Popping back and forth along the platform was tiring but extremely fun, he'd noticed that the more he practiced the less magic he needed and the less of a noise he made. He assumed the noise was the sound of the excess magic disappearing as it was no longer connected to his body and had to release its energy in some way.

He assumed that if you could get the amount of magic being used exactly right you could actually appear silently, he was getting close already. After going up and down the platform a hundred times or so he decided to try something a little more difficult.

He firmly pictured Diagon Alley in his mind and popped right in front of the bookstore, checking around to make sure no one noticed he popped back to the train station, he then went to the Dursleys' front door and left again, not before in a fit of childishness ringing the bell as loudly as he could until he heard the sound of his uncle barreling down the stairs. Still giggling he popped into his old primary school classroom, then over to the park and back to the station again.

Figuring that he'd need to go to the tryouts on Saturday and he had no idea where they were, he attempted to go somewhere he'd never been, but knew about, picturing the cliffs of Dover in his head, the picture from a book that he'd read, he could feel it take slightly longer this time as his magic seemed to match the picture in his head to the location before dumping him unceremoniously right on the edge of the cliff, thankfully the howling wind was blowing inland and when he fell over it was in the right directly with only his legs dangling over the edge.

Taking a big breath to stead himself which was difficult because of his shivering he took himself back to the station again.

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Harry awoke on Friday morning in a very good mood, he'd gotten a decent night's sleep for the first time in three days, as he'd spent the previous night practicing apperating again. He'd received a letter from Rich yesterday indicating that the tryouts would be held this Saturday (which he already knew) at 4:30 AM (which would be handy for getting out of the castle) at the national quidditch stadium in Bath.

He was due to have his meeting with the Headmaster today to attempt to get permission to go before he resorted to his backup plan, he wasn't hopeful but he figured it was worth trying as it would be far less effort if he could avoid having to sneak out.

He'd penned a short note requesting a meeting with Dumbledore which he'd handed to Professor Sprout in Herbology, she'd assured him that she'd give it to the Headmaster and indeed shortly after lunch he'd received a reply via a school owl indicating that Dumbledore would be delighted to speak with him and confirming Harry's suspicions about the origins of his invisibility cloak, after comparing the handwriting.

Following the directions that Sprout had given him Harry made his way through the castle before coming to a stop in front of a huge stone gargoyle. Looking up at the beast Harry spoke the password that he'd been given, "sugar quill."

The gargoyle sprang to life as though the sun had just gone down and Harry stepped past it and onto a rotating spiral staircase. Interested he examined the patterns of the magic behind it as he didn't think that a staircase that simply rotated would lift him up like this one was. It appeared that it was rotating on the walls not the centre which was causing it to move through the castle like a screw through wood, there was some form of constant vanishing enchantment on the top of the staircase which caused it to reappear at the bottom and start the cycle again – all very neat.

Stepping of at the platform at the top and suddenly feeling a little bit nervous Harry knocked on the door to the headmaster's office. Upon hearing a "come in," he entered.

The office was magnificent, it encapsulated the entire tower with a view out the window over the lake and the grounds. There were bookshelves all around the room holding both books and little gadgets and devices which were slowly ticking and whirring, a large stone staircase hugged the wall leading up to a door which Harry assumed was Dumbledore's quarters and behind a desk that looked like it was older than him sat the headmaster looking serenely at Harry.

"Good afternoon Headmaster." Harry offered politely.

"Good afternoon indeed, it's always pleasant to receive a visit from one of my students. Would you like a sherbet lemon?" Harry raised his hand and shook his head politely declining the sweet, "how can I help you today then?"

Deciding to get straight down to business, they could chit chat later, Harry said, "I'm not sure if you're aware sir," Harry was in fact positive that Dumbledore was aware, "but a couple of weeks ago after the quidittch match I was approached by Jamie Derich and Richard Jilks who represent the English national squad.

They've asked me to come and tryout for the national team, I'm sorry about the late notice but I was only given the date and time today." This was of course untrue – the time yes but Harry had known about the date for weeks.

Dumbledore seemed to study him intensely harry noticed a very fine wisp of magic escape his eyes and travel towards harry he could tell just by looking this wasn't searching for any more information other than a lie or lack thereof, Harry having had little trouble lying to anyone since he was five had no trouble fooling it.

Sighing gently Dumbledore said "I'm sorry Mr. Potter, Harry, may I call you Harry?" Harry wordlessly acquiesced, "with what's going on at the moment I can't allow a student to go anywhere unsupervised. I know what you've been offered is a tremendous honour but I'm sure it will be offered again."

Harry had of course been expecting this exact response however thought that it would be a bit obvious that he was going to try something if he didn't put up any fight so he decided to whine a little.

"But sir, isn't the danger in the school?"

"You're a smart boy Harry, I'm sure you've figured out as well as I have that there must be outside influences," He extended the last word slightly as though giving a clue.

Harry hadn't actually put that much thought into the attacks no one seemed overly hurt and quite frankly at the moment he had more important things to deal with. Still he was never one to pass up free information.

"But why would they try and hurt me sir?"

"The attacks Harry may be a ruse to get you to leave the school for 'safety' reasons, you don't think it's odd that after over a decade of peace and relative quiet at Hogwarts that something happens as soon as you start school?"

"You think it might be the wizard who murdered my parents?"

"Voldemort Harry, call things by their proper name."

"I didn't know it sir, I couldn't get anyone to tell me, why is that?"

"People are still scared, there is a general feeling that speaking his name aloud is prompting fate, as it were."

"Is there a reason for that sir?"

"There were," Dumbledore paused, "rumors, during his rise to power that he had created a taboo over his name such that those who dared speak it would incur his wrath."

"You can do that?" Harry asked in bemusement, "Make something happen to someone anytime they just say a word?"

"You can, however it is very difficult and takes an enormous amount of power, also you can't just do it to any word, it needs to be something that is uttered infrequently as a word that is spoken often takes far too much power to tame it, so to speak.  
>Also the harsher the consequences of speaking the word as well as the area that the taboo encompasses increases the level of power required. Does that make sense?"<p>

"Yes sir, I'm noticing there is a bit of a pattern to all this magic," he said with a small grin, "did Voldemort make the taboo?"

Dumbledore chuckled at the comment then sobered, "That is excellent that you do see that Harry, keep looking for those patterns no matter how convoluted they may seem as noticing them and being able to apply them is truly the mark of a great wizard.  
>I never saw any evidence that Voldemort created the taboo as I spoke his name many times during his rise to power and nary had even a nosebleed. I believe the rumors were created in order to limit the amount that people would speak his name so that the word would be easier to tame, thanks to you he never had the time to go through with the plan."<p>

Harry paused to think about that for a bit, he was a bit proud really that he apparently was on the way to becoming a great wizard, of course, he already thought this but it was nice to hear it confirmed.

"Well thank you for the chat sir, but I'd better go and owl Richard and Jamie, you're sure I can't go?"

"I'm afraid not my boy, but feel free to stop by any time, It's delightful to discuss magic with someone as interested as yourself.

Harry bade his goodbyes and left, pondering taboos and quidditch.

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Harry awoke bright and early Saturday morning, well early it certainly wasn't bright yet as it was only three am. He collected the half dozen school brooms that he'd pilfered from the change rooms and hidden under his four poster bed.

After his performance in the last game against Gryffindor and the subsequent trainings he knew that he'd burn through at least two or three during a normal practice and when he was trying his hardest in the tryouts, well he could only hope that six would be enough.

Knowing that he always rose before his dorm mates especially on the weekends he took some parchment and a quill and penned a short note saying that he had woken early but felt terrible and went back to bed saying that he'd see them for lunch or dinner at the absolute latest.

He then took his pillow and transfigured it into a Harry shaped pillow and put it back in his bed, it was hardly the best deception but he doubted anyone would actually pull the drapes.

Donning his quidditch yellows, gathering up the broomsticks and tossing the invisibility cloak over himself he made his way through the dark castle, through the secret corridor and up to Hogsmede station,

Since he hadn't actually been given an image of the stadium or co-ordinates he had decided to head to the Leaky Cauldron which he'd discovered was open 24/7 as a free floo point and then floo to the game, this would also help avoid suspicions about his ability to apparate.

On arriving at the Cauldron he had a quick look to make sure no one saw him and walked over to the fireplace, a little nervous as he'd never done this before he took a handful of powder from the pot on the mantelpiece threw it in the fire, then acting much braver than he felt stepped into the glowing green flames and said in a firm voice, "National Quidditch stadium."

He started spinning violently whizzing past fireplaces catching miniscule glimpses of rooms and halls before being unceremoniously dumped out the grate and onto the floor of what looked like the Hufflepuff change rooms but white instead of yellow.

"Ah Harry glad you could make it."

A/N – had to cut this chapter short as I wanted to get it posted and I'm only about halfway through what I originally had planned, so I guess it'll become two chapters – Yay.  
>Thanks very much for everyone for bearing with me I know I'm terrible with updates. If you've enjoyed this chapter or any of the others – or have any questions, please let me know in the reviews!<br>Thanks for reading.


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